John had met the emperor once, before Charlemagne had been crowned Holy Roman Emperor of all Europe. Then King of the Franks, Charlemagne was an impressive bull of a man who ruled with an iron fist. Despite the power and gusto with which he governed, the man was also an intellectual and a devout Christian of renowned faith. John not only respected and admired him, he also feared him.
And he feared, too, the reason for this unannounced visit under Charlemagne’s sails. Protocol would have had them send greetings well in advance of their visit so that John would have an opportunity to make preparations to host them. Obviously, there had to be some reason the men hadn’t wanted him to meet them well prepared.
The wimpled woman howled. She swayed on her feet but refused to sit. Her cries carried ahead of the rowboat through the warm August air. “Must you lurch so? Oh, I fear I shall faint before we make it to the shore!”
The rowing men grimaced, and John suspected they’d have liked for the woman to faint, if only to still her cries. As the boat drew nearer, the man closest to the prow, the only man without an oar in his hand, called out, “Greetings in the name of Charlemagne, Emperor of all Rome.” The man spoke in impeccable Latin. “What lands are these?”
John could only hope his own linguistic training was up to the imperial standard. “Friends, this is the Christian Kingdom of Lydia.”
A relieved smile spread across the man’s face, and John realized his expression had been quite anxious up to that moment. The man tossed a rope. “We seek King John, the healer.”
“You have found him.” The symbol of cross and crown that decorated John’s habergeon signified his position. He caught the rope and pulled the boat toward the dock with a mighty heave. Behind him, Luke and Renwick grabbed the line, while Eliab and Urias stumbled over themselves.
The man’s smile grew broader. “Then God has surely been with us. I am sorry to arrive unannounced, but we had no alternative.” As the boat was pulled alongside the length of the dock, the man bounded onto the wharf and bowed low. “I am Boden, a servant of Charlemagne and acting captain of the emperor’s ship.”
“Acting captain?” John looked the man over. Clearly the youth was a strong and strapping lad, but he hardly seemed old enough to be a captain. Indeed, he was certainly younger than John or Luke.
“Alas, my beloved father was commissioned captain by Charlemagne himself and vested with a mission of the utmost importance—to carry the emperor’s most precious cargo. But we were attacked at sea by Saracens, and my father died defending his ship.” Boden’s face blanched as he spoke.
“You have done well to continue on his mission.” John hoped his words would provide some comfort to the youth.
But Boden only shook his head. “I implore thee, Your Majesty John the healer. You are our only remaining hope that this mission might succeed.” He raised his hand toward the boat.
The wimpled woman had quit her moaning and now peeled back the silk veil that covered the face of the bundled figure the men had so carefully loaded onto the boat.
John saw a flushed jawline and rosy lips that could only belong to a woman. So Luke had been right. This was no boy but a female of about twenty years of age. In fact, whoever she was, her features were beautiful, her complexion pale, save for a flush John recognized all too well.
Fever.
Her drawn lips confirmed it. The woman was suffering. No wonder Boden had twice referred to him as John, the healer. It was a title he was loath to use, but one which desperate men rushed to give him, especially when they had need of a man to stand between their loved ones and the advancing scythe of death. Yes, he’d been trained by his mother as a healer—a practice her family had observed for generations. When he’d taken to his studies with far greater success than his brothers, some had said he had a gift.
Now he considered it a curse. He hardly considered himself worthy of the title healer. Not when he’d failed to save his own wife or the mother who’d trained him.
Boden nodded to the lady in waiting, who peeled back more of the cloth.
“Ah!” Urias and Eliab recoiled at the sight of the infected gash above the woman’s right eye, which followed the curve of her eyebrow. The angry wound had swollen her eyelid shut, festering across her face in fever-reddened waves.
John understood immediately. He’d seen injuries that had deteriorated to a similar state before. Rarely had the sufferer survived. Rather than ask the men to lift the young woman, John lowered himself into the boat and approached her. He could smell the rancid scent of the infection and recognized with dismay the golden yellow crust that seeped from the gash.
The sight and smell carried as clear a message as any tolling death bell.
The lovely woman had less than a day to live.
And the herb that could save her grew half a day’s journey into the mountains, in the borderlands Lydia shared with the Illyrians. John’s father, King Theodoric, had died defending those borderlands. And yet, as John observed the woman’s fever-flushed features, he realized she’d have to have crushed hare’s tongue leaves applied to her injury by nightfall. Even then, it might be too late to save her.
He turned to Boden. “Was she injured two or three days ago?”
“Three days,” Boden answered. “How did you know?”
Relieved that the Saracens hadn’t attacked closer to the Lydian coast, John nonetheless felt the weight of the young woman’s grim prognosis. She’d already gone too long without treatment. “Infections of this nature always run the same course. Once the secretions turn yellow, the sufferer has less than a day to live.”
Boden’s face blanched, and his men at the oars hung their heads.
John didn’t doubt the sailors had been at the oars to bring the ship to Lydia—with her sails rent and patched, they’d have rowed in desperate hope of saving the woman’s life. Obviously the woman must have meant a great deal to them for the men to take on such a strenuous task. John wished he could tell them their efforts hadn’t been in vain. “You mentioned the emperor’s precious cargo.” He began the question slowly and found his throat had gone dry.
As he’d feared, Boden pointed to the woman. “She is the precious cargo—Princess Gisela, one of Charlemagne’s daughters. She has been pledged to marry an Illyrian prince. We were to have her delivered by Christmastide.”
“You were running ahead of schedule.”
“That we were,” Boden acknowledged with a bittersweet smile, “until the Saracens found us. If she dies, there will likely be war.”
“War!” Urias exclaimed.
“And you’ve gotten us involved in it?” Eliab added.
John raised a hand to quiet the courtiers. “Boden made the right choice.” He looked at the flushed face of the princess and felt sorrow rise inside him. Such a beautiful young woman. It would be tragic for her to die so young. His heart beat out a desperate prayer that somehow, in spite of his failures as a healer, God would see fit to spare the princess from death.
* * *
Princess Gisela felt the boat rock as someone stepped out from it. The sun burned hot against her face, even hotter than when the stifling veil of silk had covered her. Or perhaps her fever had grown that much worse.
“Can you save her?” Hope sprang to Boden’s voice.
“I could.” The voice of King John, the healer, followed him as he climbed back onto the dock. “Hare’s tongue leaves have proven an effective cure against this type of yellow secretion. But the leaves must be freshly picked, and the nearest plants grow in the mountains on the Illyrian borderlands. A swift rider could reach them by nightfall.”
“Then send your swiftest rider,” Boden insisted. “We will pay the expense—”
“It is not the expense that worries me. The rider must know what he is looking for.” King John’s tone grew pessimistic. “And have daylight enough to find it. Besides that, if the hare’s tongue leaves are not applied today, there won’t be time to stop the spreading infection. She’ll be dead by
morning.”
“She is a vigorous one,” Boden insisted. “There is fight in her.”
“I can see that. Otherwise she would be dead already.”
“Oh!” Hilda, her maid, who’d been simpering through the conversation, sounded as though she might faint.
Another voice, similar to the king’s, spoke with challenge. “You could find it, John.”
Gisela noted that the man hadn’t addressed the king with his title. A peer of some sort? Perhaps a brother or uncle.
The king didn’t chastise the man for his familiarity but answered his question. “If God is with me, yes, I could likely find the hare’s tongue by nightfall. There is, however, the matter of bringing it back in time to save the emperor’s daughter.”
“It would be dark out by then, Your Majesty,” one of the earlier naysayers cautioned. “A dangerous time to ride through the mountains.”
“And it would be too late,” another naysayer noted. “You said she has to have the hare’s tongue by nightfall. You’d have to ride through the night to bring it back by dawn.”
Princess Gisela thought quickly. She hadn’t faced a long journey and Saracen pirates just to be defeated by a horse ride. If she could have opened her eyes, she’d have taken a good look at the naysayers and had them chastised after she recovered. She had no intention of dying—not this day, nor any other soon to come.
How could she make them understand she would do whatever was necessary? Already the hot fingers of fever clawed their way across her face. If the king’s herb could stop the pain, she’d make the journey herself. As for the expense, her father was a generous man. The Emperor Charlemagne would see that King John was handsomely rewarded.
Princess Gisela licked her lips and tried to find her voice.
Young Boden spoke first and sounded as though he might cry. “Then it has all been for nothing. My father has died, and we will lose the princess, too.”
“You shall not lose me.” Gisela resented the weakness in her voice. She cleared her throat to muster enough volume to be heard. “I shall ride with the king. If I am with him, the hare’s tongue may be applied as soon as it is located—before dark, in time to stop the infection.”
* * *
John studied the face of the princess who spoke with apt appreciation of the situation. Her eyes were still closed—the one being swelled certainly shut, the other swollen as well and lidded out of sympathy. Even slumped in a bundle, Princess Gisela had an air of dignity and the shrewd intellect of her father.
He found himself wanting to save her—not just for Boden’s sake, or her sake, or even to prevent war with the Illyrians, but to save this sensible, strong-willed woman. He wanted to heal her.
But he’d felt that impulse before and still failed. He’d buried his skills since then. What was the use of trying to help someone, of offering them hope, only to have them linger a bit longer and die in pain?
To his relief, the wimpled woman began discounting the idea immediately. “Your Highness, you can’t even open your eyes. How could you ride?”
“It would be a grueling journey,” Urias added. “Surely in your present condition—”
“She is a capable rider,” Boden offered. “But given her injuries...”
Gisela raised her chin with a stubborn tilt. “I could share the king’s horse.”
Her assertion brought a roar of disapproval from the courtiers, and even Boden’s men, who’d silently manned their oars all this time, appeared to have some difficulty maintaining their impassive expressions.
Boden, especially, looked vexed. As Charlemagne’s acting captain, no doubt the man was expected to grant any request Gisela made. As the emperor’s daughter, she was of higher rank than anyone there, except for John himself, and that was only because they were in Lydia and not her father’s holdings. Had they been standing on the soil of the Roman Empire, he’d have bowed to her.
Boden brushed the sweat from his brow. “Perhaps, Your Highness, you could be carried in a litter after the king. Your maid could accompany you.”
“Litters travel slowly. There isn’t time. My maid can follow on another horse.” Princess Gisela spoke in a commanding voice and clearly expected her father’s servants to obey. “Now help me up. We must make haste. Already the day grows long.”
The men laid down their oars and helped the maid from the boat first. Then they gingerly hoisted the princess toward the dock. She stood, half leaning on her maid, her injuries once again covered by the veil.
John felt a sense of relief that the woman was able to stand. Perhaps she could stay on a horse. A litter, as she’d aptly noted, would be much too slow. Nor could he afford to have her ride another horse behind his. If he became separated from her party, especially as darkness fell, they would waste precious time finding one another again in the thick woods.
And one horse had a greater chance of slipping unseen through the Illyrian borderlands. The larger their party, the greater the risk of being spotted. Relations with the Illyrians were fragile enough. He had no desire to strain them further.
“What do you think?” Luke leaned close and spoke in a hushed tone. “She might be able to make the ride. Will you be able to find the herb?”
“The summer draws to a close. Hare’s tongue isn’t so abundant now, but yes, I should be able to find some.”
“Is there any chance you could bring it back in time to save her if she stayed at the castle?”
“None.” John wished he could tell his brother otherwise. It was foolish enough to get involved in the emperor’s dealings, situated as they were between the Roman Empire to the west, and the Illyrian holdings of the Byzantine Empire to the east. If the Illyrians and the Romans decided to play tug of war with Lydia, his tiny nation would never know peace.
But if he let the emperor’s daughter die without even trying to help, the empires would obliterate Lydia for revenge.
He didn’t like it—not at all. But neither did he see any way around it. And there wasn’t time to waste fretting. There was more than one woman’s life at stake—there was the safety of all Lydia. If the Illyrians went to war with the Roman Empire, Lydia would be trampled between them—especially if Lydia was blamed for bringing war upon them.
King John raised his voice and addressed those gathered on the dock—including half a dozen soldiers who’d been dispatched from the castle and now stood at attention near the head of the wharf. “Ready my horse and falcon and prepare a horse and party for the maid.” He looked to the wimpled woman. “I’m sorry, I haven’t been told your name.”
“Hilda, Your Highness.”
“Prepare a litter for Hilda.” He lowered his voice and explained to those standing nearby, “The retinue can follow as best they can.”
“But, Your Majesty,” Urias sputtered, “you’re not really thinking of taking a riding party to the Illyrian border?”
“Certainly not,” John assured the courtier. “The riding party won’t be able to travel nearly as quickly as my horse. Once I’ve applied the hare’s tongue to her injury, the princess and I will double back and meet up with her maid. If we must encamp on the road, she’ll have a proper attendant.”
“Your Majesty,” Eliab simpered, “who will be in charge of the castle while you’re away?”
Only respect for his father and the trust he’d placed in the courtiers kept John from uttering a prickly retort. But even the trust of his late father wouldn’t earn either man a custodial role in his absence. “Prince Luke is more than capable of overseeing matters while I’m away. With your prayers for my safe passage, I should be back by sundown tomorrow.”
“And if you’re not, what then?” Eliab pressed. “Shall we send a regiment to look for you?”
“No.” John gave them a hard look and made sure Luke heard him clearly. “If I am delayed beyond next evening, it may be a sign of trouble with the Illyrians. Dispatching soldiers would be the worst possible response. I’ll have my falcon. If Fledge returns without me, th
en you may be concerned. Whatever happens, you must trust Luke’s judgment. He is a prudent and capable leader.”
Luke gave him a firm smile in return for his compliment. “God be with you, brother.”
John met his brother’s eyes and was glad to see that Luke understood. They hadn’t asked for this, but it wasn’t a challenge they could walk away from. As rulers of Lydia, they had an obligation to protect their people—as their father had done—and to die protecting their people, if the situation called for it. Despite the political entanglements, this mission was no more difficult than others they had undertaken in the past. But there was a great deal more riding on the outcome.
ISBN: 9781460301241
COLORADO COURTSHIP
Copyright © 2013 by Harlequin Books S.A.
The publisher acknowledges the copyright holders of the individual works as follows:
WINTER OF DREAMS
Copyright © 2013 by Cheryl Ludwigs
THE RANCHER’S SWEETHEART
Copyright © 2013 by Debra Ullrick
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