by Ana Seymour
At the pit of her stomach was a curious stirring.
She should definitely call the monks, she thought, even as she began to lift the man and strip the bloody tunic from his back. His naked chest was as hard and powerful as his thighs. Bridget swallowed, her mouth gone suddenly dry.
Without taking her eyes from the man’s body, she leaned over to rinse the bloody rag in the cooling water. She was staring, she knew, but who was there to see? Then, with an impish grin at her own boldness, she proceeded to give the mysterious stranger a thorough washing from chest to…toe.
Ranulf couldn’t understand why it was taking so long to cross the Channel. And why had they stuffed him into a barrel for the crossing so that he couldn’t look out at the sea and sky? He tried to lift a fist to pound on the lid and demand release, but, to his amazement, his arm wouldn’t move. Nothing would, for that matter.
Nothing was moving except the barrel, which made its regular up-and-down swoop with every new wave. Ranulf wanted to be sick, but even his stomach wouldn’t move. Nor his mouth. His eyes wouldn’t open, either. What had happened to him? he wondered in sudden panic.
The barrel surged again with the wave—up, up, then holding for an endless moment, then down. The movement sent a shaft of pain stabbing through his head. Jesu. What was wrong?
As the pain splintered light into his brain, the top of the barrel lifted and a beautiful, golden-haired woman peered in at him, smiling. He tried to call to her, but his throat closed around the words.
Darkness swirled, then she was there again—the golden angel. He made another desperate attempt to speak, but all he could produce was a moan of pain. His groan echoed off the sides of the barrel. As the sound grew louder and louder, the angel slammed the lid of the barrel shut on top of him, and everything went black.
Brother Alois, acting abbot of St. Gabriel, seemed to assume that it had been Brother Francis who had bathed the wounded man and dressed him in one of the monks’ own habits. Neither Bridget nor Francis bothered to correct him. But after her intimate session with the stranger the previous evening, Bridget had decided to let the monks take over the nursing. She’d spent one of her restless nights with visions of outside the walls. She dreamed that she’d accompanied the monks to market all the way to Rouen, walking freely beside them along the road, and that everyone they passed on the way looked like the handsome stranger lying in the monks’ quarters.
She woke up resolving to stay away from the visitor, and kept her resolve throughout the day until evening when Francis came to request her help. “You mentioned one of your poultices, child, and I think it might help, for the poor lad has surely got the blood poisons.”
She’d finished cleaning up from dinner and the monk had caught her leaving the kitchen, ready to retire to her little home next door to it. Long ago, the small brick building had been a brewery, and the faint, yeasty smell of ale still clung stubbornly to the masonry walls. But Bridget had lived there these past ten years or more, ever since the monks decided that she needed a place of her own with a sturdy door and proper latch.
It was not that they thought any member of their order capable of the unimaginable sin that those precautions suggested. But, Brother Alois had cautioned gravely, none of them had thought Bridget’s father capable of such a transgression, either.
Bridget looked remorseful. “I’d meant to put a poultice on last night, but then I…I was distracted, I fear.”
“Will you do it yet tonight or wait until the morrow?”
“It’d best be soon. I’ll just prepare the paste and go on over to him.”
Brother Francis looked up at the darkening sky. “I’ll wait and go back with you.”
“Nay, brother. You’ve been up tending him since well before dawn. Go on to your bed. It won’t take me but a few minutes to see to him, then I’ll be safely back to my house.”
After a moment’s more convincing, Francis turned to leave, and Bridget went back into the kitchen to prepare one of her medicinal poultices of marjoram and feverfew.
Bridget had begun to study the healing arts years ago after the death of one of her favorite monks from a relatively minor injury. She’d spent nearly a month closeted in the monastery library, and then had persuaded Brothers Ebert and Alois to purchase herbs on one of their market forays. Since then, she raised the plants in her own garden, and the health of the monks of St. Gabriel had flourished accordingly.
It was dark by the time she made her way over to the monks’ quarters. As she approached the building, she felt an odd excitement at seeing the stranger again. She slipped through the tiny back door that admitted her directly into the hall next to the wounded man’s chamber.
After Francis’s sober report, she was surprised at first to see that the patient looked better than he had the previous evening. But as she approached the bed, she saw that the improved appearance was due to a heightened color that was the ominous foreshadowing of seizures and death. She’d seen it before when wounds had become poisoned.
The gravity of the man’s condition banished all other thoughts from her head, and she barely glanced at the lean body she had washed with such avid curiosity the previous day. She sat beside him on the narrow cot and removed the head bandages.
As before, he groaned at her touch, but she steeled herself to ignore the sound, and applied the poultice, pressing gently to be sure that the healing herbs would reach every part of the wound.
Under her fingers his scalp was burning. The man meant nothing to her. Indeed, if he recovered, his presence at the abbey could prove to be dangerous to her very existence. But she found herself offering up a quick prayer to St. Bridget. It seemed too cruel that death would take someone so young and so strong.
He moaned again as she rewound the bandage tightly to hold the herbs in place. “You must fight, Sir Stranger,” she whispered. “Summon to battle the healing powers of your inner soul.”
At her words, the wounded man stirred, then opened startling blue eyes and looked directly at her.
Chapter Two
Bridget gasped and pulled backward, letting the bandage slip from her hands. Her first thought was to flee, but as the head dressing started to unravel, causing the poultice to slip, she realized that she would have to finish the job she’d come to do and worry about the consequences later.
He watched her with unblinking eyes. “Are you awake, then?” she asked, hesitating.
He didn’t answer. Perhaps the head wound had struck him dumb, she thought. Or perhaps he spoke no French. She repeated the question in Latin, with the same result.
As quickly as she could, she finished tying up the bandage, though it was unnerving to work on his head with his eyes open and staring. Even in the dim candlelight, their blue was intense.
“Do you understand me, sir?” she asked.
There was no movement of his dry lips.
Bridget sat for a moment. How ironic, she thought. These were the first words she had ever addressed to someone from outside the abbey, and they appeared to have no more impact than a milkweed hitting a pond. She shivered. Perhaps she’d been born as some kind of otherworldly sprite, destined to live within the monastery walls and be seen and heard only by the monks. She’d read of faeries, but she’d never before believed herself to be one.
Could he see her? she wondered. She waved a hand in front of the man’s eyes and was rewarded with a blink. She was, at least, not invisible.
Of course, it was just as well that he couldn’t understand her, but she couldn’t hold back a sense of disappointment. She was curious to know more about their visitor. Where had he come from? What had happened to him? She rose to her feet with a sigh. Now that he appeared to be regaining his senses, she would not be able to come here again.
“Angel,” he said, the word an almost unrecognizable whisper.
Bridget stopped and turned back to the bed. She’d finished her nursing and, if the man was talking, she should leave immediately. Instead, she walked back over to
the cot and sank to her knees beside it. “Can you hear me?” she asked him.
“Bandits,” he rasped.
“Aye, you were set upon, evidently, and they’ve given you a nasty gash, but we’re taking care of you. I’ve treated you with some herbs.”
Beads of sweat stood out above his lips. He appeared to try to swallow, then said, “Thirsty.”
Bridget picked up a mug of tea that had been left on the floor and brought it to his lips. When it was apparent that he couldn’t lift his head, she slipped an arm behind his neck and lifted him against her chest so that she could help him drink.
“Not too much,” she cautioned.
He took another swallow, then sank back heavily against her arm. “Thank you, my angel.”
Bridget smiled. “I’m no angel, just a maid.” Her sudden fancy about being other than human had disappeared with this very human contact. The man could obviously see her and talk to her, and she to him. It was exhilarating.
There was an almost imperceptible shake of his head. “Angel,” he insisted, then he clutched her arm with surprisingly strong fingers and said, “Help me.”
His action startled her, but she answered, “Fear not, you’re in safe hands now, good sir. No one will hurt you here.”
“Help…find…Dragon,” he said. His eyes had gone a little wild, and a dangerous flush had come over his face.
He was looking for a dragon? Is that what he had said? Bridget bit her lips. She’d read about dragons, but she’d formed the opinion that such a creature may not truly exist. “You must rest and get well. Let the monks tend your wounds until you heal.”
“Diana,” he groaned.
Bridget was confused. Perhaps it was a woman he was looking for, not a dragon. But in any event, he didn’t have the strength to lift his head, much less go on a search. And this agitation could not be helping his cure. Perhaps she should brew him one of the sleeping teas she sometimes made for Brother Alois. “Can you not rest quiet?” she asked him. “’Tis the best thing for you now.”
Bridget couldn’t take her eyes from his striking features, which were full of anguish. He was so different from the monks. It wasn’t just his youth—there was a raw strength about him that she’d never seen among the peaceful brothers at St. Gabriel.
Suddenly the hand that held her sleeve pulled her toward him. Startled, she fell against his chest. His arm came around her and, before she could react, his mouth touched hers. “I’ll find him, Diana,” he whispered.
Bridget jumped backward, one hand flying to her lips. She opened her mouth to give an indignant protest, but stopped as she saw that the patient had slumped back on the cot, his eyes closed and his mouth sagging.
She gave his shoulder a tentative shake, but he didn’t respond. Her hands were shaking. She sat a moment, regaining her composure. He’d been out of his head, she assured herself. He’d obviously mistaken her for this woman, Diana. It had meant nothing.
But, nevertheless…she walked slowly from the tiny chamber and slipped out the back door into the cool night. The man had been delirious. He was a stranger, possibly even a malefactor. But nevertheless, she’d just had her first kiss.
“You were out of your head, my son. The mind plays tricks.” Brother Francis’s voice wavered slightly at the unaccustomed need for deceit.
“No, I swear, Brother. There was a woman in this room last night.” Ranulf struggled to sit up, and looked around the tiny cell. The idea was preposterous. The monk had explained that he was inside a monastery, being cared for by the brotherhood. Yet his visions of the lovely midnight angel had seemed so real.
His head swam with pain and he lay back against the hard straw pad. “I could have sworn she was real,” he said.
Francis smiled. “Mayhap ’twas a vision sent by the Lord to guide you through your extremity. None of us thought that you would survive such a wound.” He gestured to Ranulf’s bound head.
The waves of pain were receding. “I have to survive. I’m on a mission, and my family is depending on me to accomplish it.”
His family and others, as well. The image of Diana as he had last seen her, eyes flooded with tears, flashed through his head. He’d loved her as long as he could remember, but Diana’s heart had always belonged to Dragon. And Ranulf was determined to bring him back to her.
“From the looks of you, young man, it appears that your mission is a perilous one.”
“Nay, no one knows me here. I believe the brigands set on me by chance.”
“They were robbers, then?”
“What else?” Ranulf hesitated, trying to remember the scene. It seemed far away and unclear. He continued slowly, “Though I believe they were too well mounted and outfitted to be common thieves. The man who struck me wore armor as fine as any I’ve seen.”
Francis gave a little shudder. “There are still outlaw knights in this land. ’Tis a sad remnant of the holy effort to free the blessed sites of Christendom from the heathen.”
His attempt to recollect the incident on the road was making Ranulf feel sick. His earlier visions of the golden-haired angel were much more pleasant, but although they’d seemed as real as the feel of the mattress straw prickling his neck, they had evidently been conjured up by his delirium. “So no woman has been tending me?” he asked with a little sigh.
The monk seemed to scrunch up his face. Then he made a quick sign of the cross and said loudly, “No. There’s no woman at St. Gabriel Abbey.”
It was just as well, Ranulf mused as the round little monk stood and bustled out of the room. In his dream, Ranulf remembered kissing her—his angel-vision. He’d been confused for a moment, thinking that he was with Diana again, taking his leave, promising her to find Dragon. Ranulf closed his eyes, remembering. His angel may have been a phantom, but the petal-soft touch of her lips still lingered on his mouth.
Most of the buildings at St. Gabriel were made of fieldstone, with roofs neatly thatched by the brothers’ own hands. They formed a tidy quadrangle broken on one end by the graveyard that stood next to the monastery church. Isolated as it was in the wooded hills nearly two hours’ walk from Beauville, the closest town, the church claimed no parishioners other than the brothers themselves, which suited them fine. That meant that they didn’t have to deal with a procession of priests sent by the local bishop to meddle in their routine.
It also meant that few visitors came to explore the abbey grounds and take note of the odd building nestled in the woods about a quarter of a mile to the west of the church. The monks called the building the work shed, though it was far larger than any structure that would normally fit that term. It was as tall as the bell tower of the church, and, other than the barn, which housed the abbey’s two mules, three milk cows and assorted other animals, it was the only building at St. Gabriel made entirely of wood.
Bridget avoided the work shed whenever possible. It was where the monks usually carried out their tinkerings, which was what the monks affectionately called their inventing efforts. One never knew what variety of odor or sound would be emanating from the ramshackle structure.
But when Francis failed to bring her a report on the progress of the patient, her curiosity made her seek the monk out at his afternoon labors.
Francis and Ebert had been spending an inordinate amount of time at the shed for the past fortnight. They’d traded their duties in the gardens with other monks so that they could continue work on their latest creation, which was a refinement of the water clock Ebert had invented.
She’d be the first to admit that the monks’ ingenuity had made life easier at the monastery. She now had a spit that turned the meat automatically, driven by a device in the wall of the fireplace that turned with the heat of the fire. Of course, before the scheme had been perfected, she’d seen the ruin of at least half a dozen perfectly good roasts.
Bridget shook her head as she approached the building and was greeted with a barrage of loud bangs. She opened one of the huge wooden double doors and peered inside. Eb
ert was bent over his clock, a contraption consisting of small cups fastened around the edges of a wheel. Ebert was tall and thin. Even stooped over, his head rose above Brother Francis.
As Bridget entered, the clanging from the far end of the shed stopped. It had come from near the monks’ special pride, a large furnace they had dubbed a blast fire because of the peculiar roar of the air through it and the force of the heat it generated.
Sometimes Bridget found herself drawn into the monks’ plans, in spite of a resolve to stay detached, but today she had other things on her mind. She walked directly over to Francis and asked, “How is the patient? Has the poultice helped his wound?”
Francis’s smile looked a little nervous. “It may have helped too well, child. He’s regained his senses and had questions this morning about being nursed by a woman. A golden angel, he called you.”
Bridget grinned. “I’ve always tried to tell you that I’m much holier than you give me credit for.”
“’Tis not a cause for mirth, Bridget. It could have been disastrous, but I think I’ve convinced him that you were but a fever dream.”
Bridget’s grin faded. A fever dream. That was all she could ever be to anyone from outside of these walls. “If the fever’s broken, he should have a new poultice,” she said.
Ebert had straightened up to his full height and towered over both his fellow monk and Bridget. “Francis is right, Bridget. You must not be seen by the stranger again.”
“Make up the poultice and I’ll take it to him,” Francis added.
Bridget felt an unaccustomed prickle of resentment. She had thought of little else but the wounded stranger all day long, and it seemed unfair that now that he had regained his senses she must hide herself away. “I should see the progress of the wound myself,” she argued. “It will tell me what herbs to add to his cure.”