Never Kiss A Stranger

by Heather Grothaus

  Perhaps for the first time in her life, there was truly no one for Alys to call on save herself.

  Alys had the dreadful feeling that wherever they stopped for the night, Piers would not be able to leave, for a while at least. Until he got better, of course. He would certainly get better.

  She concentrated on him once again as she worked her legs like machines, telling herself that the green color close to his body was simply a very dark shade of green now, and not black.

  Not black.

  The voices were coming to him again for the first time in days, whispering in his ear with a vividness that was frightening. Piers fancied he could feel Judith Angwedd’s cold breath against his sweaty neck.

  Filthy, dirty, foul little beast! Your whore mother burns in hell.

  Piers’s head whipped to the left—surely his stepmother must be hiding behind that tree.

  But no—no one peeked around the trunk at him. Only moss and dead-brown vines.

  Hit him again! The voice echoed and was so loud, Piers winced at the bright pain it caused. Again, Bevan!

  “Stop!” He tried to shout, but to his horror the word came out as little more than a whimper. His eyes felt as though they were bleeding and he swiped a hand across his face. He looked down at his palm and saw that it was wet.

  Bloody hell, he was hot. And the bandage covering his fingers was damp with yellow and brown stains. Fucking Layla …

  “Piers?” He heard Alys call to him from leagues away, it seemed. He glanced over his shoulder at her, noticing with dread how little range his neck had with the pain. His head swam and he looked forward once more lest he fall over his own feet.

  You are my only heir.

  “Piers, it’s been more than an hour,” she called faintly. “I do think we should stop—you don’t look well. Are you feeling alright?”

  “I’m fine.” He tried to make his voice carry back to her, strong and certain. Each word caused his vision to pulse, the wood around him bulging with heat. “Just a bit farther.”

  My son, my son!

  He looked around him, trying to evaluate their surroundings as to suitability for camp, but he couldn’t seem to make sense of anything. There were only trees … and he could not discern forest floor from trunk or slope or rock. How far away was the road from where they walked? They should have come across one of Gillwick’s rock walls by now, and the barn would not be far beyond. How far had they come? Where was that bastard, blistering sun hiding?

  Spill his brains onto the ground …

  Bevan is no brother to you, Piers …

  “Piers, I … I think I do have need of some bushes now.”

  Are you certain he’s dead? Hit him again …

  My son, my only son! Can you ever forgive me?

  “Piers!”

  “Shut up!” Piers screamed, coming to a swaying halt and gripping his head in both hands. He fell to his knees. “All of you, just … shut up!” His breath roared in and out of him, sounding like great slides of rock down a mountainside. The ground seemed to undulate before his eyes.

  He couldn’t pass out. The cows needed to be brought in for the night still, and there had been reports of wolves north of Gillwick. The beasts were lazy in the height of summer, and he could usually frighten them away with a rock or two. Yes, he might need to keep watch, keep them safe. And Alys would need a place to sleep where Bevan would not find her …

  “Piers?” Her slippers came into view, shifting the damp leaves in fuzzy slow motion.

  “It’s alright,” Piers said, and his words sounded slurred. “Just give me a moment, Alys. I have work to do. Wait for me in the mew.” He would gladly share his pallet with Alys, but that damned monkey would have to bed elsewhere.

  Then her face was before his, her neck bent so that she could look up at him, and her fingers were like rounded icicles stroking his cheeks and forehead.

  “My God, you’re burning up!”

  “Be cooler once the sun sets,” he promised her, the spoiled girl, used as she was to her dark, stone castle. She’d never make a proper farm wife, but she was so pretty and fiery …

  “There is no sun, Piers—and it’s starting to snow,” he heard her say as if she was moving away from him. But that couldn’t be, because he could feel her hands gripping his arms, taking his pack from his shoulders.

  “My ring,” he mumbled, and tried to swipe at his bag, but the woman had the speed of a minx, darting away from him in a blur. “It’s all I have.”

  “It’s alright,” she placated, and was half pulling him back against something solid. Where did she find a bed so soft to bring him? Was she so wealthy that she could conjure furniture from raw wood?

  “You have me.” She framed his face with her frozen palms. “Just rest here—I’ll start a fire.”

  “No,” he struggled to sit up, but was unsuccessful. “No fire. Too close to the road.” The wolves would find them, and he hadn’t brought the cows in yet. His father would be so disappointed.

  “I have no earthly idea where the road is, but I don’t think it’s close.” Her voice faded in and out as she seemed to move away and then near again. “I think we’ve gone somewhat off course.”

  He realized his eyes were closed, and tried to open them. It was not safe to sleep with Bevan skulking about. Little Alys bloomed into vision, her sweet brow crinkled, her pink lips in a thin line as she clumsily piled twigs atop each other. She dug in his bag rudely, eventually pulling out his flint and steel and a bit of tinder, dropping everything twice as she tried to work the tools.

  “You’ll burn yourself,” Piers slurred, marveling at the softness beneath his head now. He was enjoying watching her move, and the pain in his head was only a dumb, numb memory.

  “Shh,” she chastised.

  Piers chuckled. So stubborn. His eyes closed. He struggled to open them again, and when he succeeded he saw dancing flames. How long had he slept? It seemed only an instant. He was confused. And cold, now. So cold.

  He looked down and saw that his legs had been covered by the bulk of Alys’s blue perse gown. The dusting of snow across his lap shifted, and the monkey poked her head from beneath the cloth near his chest.

  “W-whaddo you w-want?” Piers challenged through his chattering teeth. “G-geddoff.”

  “You’re keeping each other warm.” Alys’s face was before his again as she crouched before him. Her cheeks were cream and poppies, her breath little white clouds in the night with the fire behind her.

  When had night fallen?

  “Here, have a drink.” She pushed the lip of the jug against his teeth and turned it up. The water was wet and delicious as it flooded down his hot and tight throat.

  She set the jug on her knee. “Piers, I can’t find the road,” Alys said. “Do you know where we are?”

  Piers frowned. He concentrated on her face, hoping it would remind him. “G-gillwick?”

  Her lips grew thinner. He didn’t like the look of Alys distressed. She was always so carefree.

  “Try to remember,” she said. “You’re very ill, Piers, and I must try to find a village or travelers on the road or something. You must try to help me decide in which direction to go.”

  “No. C-can’t leave,” Piers insisted. “B-Bevan find you. Or the wolves.”

  “There are no wolves, Piers. I have to find someone to help us. Can you think at all where we might be?”

  His memories all boiled together place and time. Gillwick, the abbey where the monk had taken him, the Foxe Ring, the river, the road to London. He couldn’t put them in correct order. He thought and thought, so hard that his head almost started to hurt and so he stopped. “We’re not to London yet, are we?”

  “No. No, we’re not.” She drew a deep breath and blew it out slowly through her lips. “Alright. Listen to me: I’m going in a straight line the direction I think is south. If I find nothing in an hour, I’ll come straight back. I’ve built the fire so that your location is quite visible.”

 
; “No,” Piers argued.

  “Yes. I need all the help I can get in the dark. And perhaps God will hear my prayers and someone will find you before I return.”

  “If Bevan … he’ll kill me,” Piers croaked.

  “If no one finds us, I’m afraid you’ll die any matter,” she said levelly.

  He stared at her, realizing a moment of clarity as her face blurred in and out of his vision. It was too dangerous for her to go, but he knew he could not stop her. And he knew that he was quite ill.

  He tried to smile. “Sorry … terrible husband.”

  She peered at him for a moment and then her lips curved upward softly. “You are a fine husband. You have taken such care of me, now it is my turn to try to do the same for you. You need me, Piers, and I will not fail you.”

  Her words struck him somewhere deep within his feverish body, and he tried to swallow. She was planning to walk south …

  “Don’t go,” he whispered. He could barely find the strength to move his lips now.

  “It will be fine,” she insisted. “You’ll get well and we’ll gain London just in time. You’ll see.” She leaned forward and pressed her warm lips to his cheek for a long moment. When she leaned back, there were tears in her eyes.

  “Don’t,” he said again, his words little more than formed breath.

  “Take care of him, Layla. I’ll be back as soon as I can. Two hours at most.”

  And then she was gone, the black night and the cold, blowing snow rushing in to fill the void she had left.

  “Alys,” he whispered into the wind. “Alys, the road is north …”

  Chapter 13

  The only other time in Alys’s life when she had been almost as scared as she was now, was when she had finally accepted that her mother was going to die. She had not been scared for Amicia—the Foxe matron was so sure of her better reward, and had suffered humiliatingly for so long—it was a blessing upon her to finally go in peace to meet her beloved Morys once more. Then, as now, Alys had been scared for herself, but her fears were of what was to become of her happy, predictable life, how she and Cecily and Sybilla would fare with no one to lead the family and defend against the king’s accusations save the cool, eldest daughter.

  Sybilla had always possessed a will of pure steel, true, but she had no experience outside of her family and Fallstowe. Their mother, Amicia, had years of life behind her, coming as a young woman from Bordeaux to England, marrying Morys Foxe, standing at his side as he ruled Fallstowe in the midst of the civil turmoil that marked Henry III’s rule. That experience and strength were the very reasons Amicia herself had held the demesne after her husband’s death. So even though Sybilla had been in training by her mother for hours upon hours as the end drew near, sometimes going as many as three days without leaving Amicia’s chamber, Sybilla was no battle-wizened, gray haired lord. Alys’s eldest sister was but a score and seven, and though her way with men was like magic, she had never even come close to betrothal, as far as Alys knew.

  Alys wondered for the thousandth time what Amicia and Sybilla had talked about those last months, what was so secretive and intricate that not only were Cecily and Alys forbidden from their mother’s chamber while Sybilla was within, they were warned against simple inquiry. After Amicia’s death, her personal maid—the only other person save old Graves who had been allowed in the chamber during these meetings between Amicia and her eldest—had simply vanished from Fallstowe.

  Alys huffed ragged breaths as she stumbled through the forest, lit only by a waning moon intermittently filtered through clouds which spit snow at her occasionally, as if for sport. She’d run straight away into countless trees, fallen over logs and into washes parallel to animal trails. She could feel her scraped palms burning in the cold blackness as they reached out before her, the ache in her twisted knee, the fear spiraling up her spine with greedy haste. She guessed she had been running in a southerly direction for almost an hour now, and still, she had not crossed the road.

  She thought of Piers, alone and helplessly ill, lying like so much bait before a roaring fire with only one tiny monkey for protection, and the image caused a sob to swell in her throat.

  And so she continued to think upon Sybilla instead, and to her surprise and regret, Alys realized that she longed for no other living person as badly as she wanted her eldest sister right at that moment. Sybilla would know what to do. Sybilla would waste no time wandering around a remote stretch of deep forest in the dead of night with a snowstorm threatening. No, Sybilla would not tolerate being lost. Actually, Sybilla would have likely had the good sense to not be in this situation at all. Alys tried to think of what she could have done differently.

  She should have not bothered with food in Pilings, saving her—albeit very convincing—theatrical display, and should have instead stolen a horse. She and Piers would be almost to London now certainly, even riding double. But she had seen no stables obvious in the village, and likely she would have been caught. Had she procured a mount, ‘twas likely she and Piers would not have shared the night in the rock shelter, a memory already too dear to Alys to consider erasing.

  Perhaps when she and Piers had been at Fallstowe’s very gate, Alys should have gone ahead into the castle and gathered all the supplies they would need and caught him later in the wood. But no, at that point, he would have gladly gone on without her and she would have never found him. Then he would be completely alone now, and possibly already dead from whatever sickness was claiming him.

  Perhaps she should have never insisted on following him in the first place.

  Or, perhaps, she should have heeded Sybilla’s wishes and not gone to the Foxe Ring at all.

  Alys realized she was crying as she panted and groped her way through the maze of flurries and sudden trees. Had she listened to Sybilla, she who had single-handedly held Fallstowe better than any man could have, who had always tried to accommodate Alys’s wishes, who had allowed her sisters to keep their lives and their home by sheer cunning and strength and brazen defiance to their very king, Alys would right now be in her safe, warm rooms, helping to plan her own extravagant wedding.

  But no, her foolishness had led her to believe that her life was worth more than what Sybilla had selflessly struggled to give her. Alys had wanted everything and then even more. Never satisfied. Childish wishes, petulant rebellion—Alys could at last see all of her faults of which she had been accused. And she knew she was guilty. Sybilla had been right all along. Even Piers had taken correct measure of her the very first night they had met. It had been so obvious to everyone save spoiled, demanding Alys Foxe herself.

  She looked back at her life up until that moment with bittersweet longing, and with the knowledge that no matter how she eventually came out of this cursed wood—whether on to London with Piers or back to the haven that was Fallstowe—that old life was no more. She no longer cared that Sybilla had commanded that she marry Clement Cobb. Alys realized now that it had been she who had backed her sister into that corner, and then railed at her for doling out the consequence, and there were fates well worse than that gentle privilege. She wanted to thank Sybilla now, for so many things, and to tell her she was sorry. So sorry, and so late.

  But what she wanted more was for Piers to live. To live, and to carry on to London and see his victory, however he needed it to play out. In her heart, she belonged to Piers, and she would do whatever it took to save his life and his future, even if it meant the destruction of her own.

  She still truly believed that fate had brought them together in the Foxe Ring, and that they had met—and Alys had stubbornly clung to him—for a purpose greater than either of them knew. Perhaps part of that purpose was to cause Alys to realize the folly of her own life, and to that end, it was greatly accomplished, but she still thought that it was also because she was the only one who could help Piers seize what was rightfully his. What Bevan and Judith Angwedd had so cruelly tried to steal.

  When she held up her life in comparison to his, A
lys was shamed to her very soul. She desperately tried to recall a time previous when she had acted wholly for the benefit of another person, and to her mortification, she could not.

  “Well then, let this one count,” she gasped to the trees, as if pleading with them to consider her intentions and pick up their roots like skirts to create an avenue to her rescue.

  Perhaps the trees heard her, and arrived at their judgment. For with her very next clumsy step, a rope tightened around her ankle, and with a crack and a whoosh, Alys was jerked off her feet. Her back slammed against the frozen ground for an instant and then she was dragged upward, her temple scraping against the jagged end of a dead, broken branch. Her ascent came to a sudden, bobbing halt and she was left hanging upside down, swaying from the underside of a tree.

  It began to snow in earnest, hinting at a silent, grim finale to Alys Foxe’s grand adventure.

  Alys began to scream.

  Cecily Foxe paced.

  Sybilla and the soldiers had been gone for almost two days, and there was no word yet, from or about her older or younger sister. The fire in the hearth closest to the lord’s table roared, but still Cecily shivered as her slippers traced over a single line of seven stones, back and forth. She gripped her upper arms and rubbed at them periodically, so firmly that she knew she would be bruised the next day, but was unable to stop. She felt dizzy, and as though she was freezing.

  In Sybilla’s absence, Cecily was effectively head of Fallstowe, and the very idea of it had obviously made her immensely fretful—feeling sensations that were completely at odds with her reality. She knew they were naught but a side effect of her concern for her family. They were not real.