Boadicea's Legacy (31 page)

“That sounds wonderful.”

“I've done everything that Sir Percy suggested could get me to Heaven and to God. I'm a knight sworn to uphold Christianity. I've been to the Holy Land on pilgrimage. I've treated women with respect and honor, and I bow my knee to the king and my liege.”

“You are practically a saint,” Brother William smiled into the dark. “So remind me why you are unworthy to be in love?”

“I've fallen in love with a witch.”

“Ah. Now the story gets interesting.”

Os picked a blade of grass. The fragrant green scent made him think of Ela and wildflowers—of Antonias's memory of making love to Ana before battle.

His groin hardened, and he tossed the blade of grass to the ground.

“You see, Sir Percy believed that women were … evil, for want of a better word. Since Eve tempted Adam in the Garden of Eden, women have been out to ruin man. Aye, he admitted that we need them to procreate, but there should be no joy in such a union. Whores were for pleasure, paid with coin—an honest transaction.”

“Whores? Honest transaction?” Brother William nodded
and rubbed his chin.

Mustering up the saliva to swallow, Os said, “Aye. Only when necessary, but no harm done.”

“And you agreed that this was just?”

Os stared up at the sky. “I did. But after he died, and I was searching … for something … I found a different way of looking at things. In Jerusalem, people bathed every day, and they didn't die as Sir Percy claimed. They were just … clean.”

“Ew,” the monk said with a shiver.

“And I've never been wronged by a woman, although I've deeply wronged the one that I love.”

“The one you think is a witch. And she didn't turn ye into a frog?”

“I am not talking to you for entertainment. I want answers, and it seems you are the only one around to give them to me.” Os plucked another blade of grass and stuck it in his mouth.

“St. Augustine says that witches aren't real. The church agrees.”

“But what about heresy? I am guilty—guilty because I've seen with my own two eyes the things she can do!”

“Can she fly?” Brother William leaned in so that he and Os were eye to eye, and a moonbeam bounced off his bald scalp.

“Nay—of course not.”

“Well, what kind of magic can she do?”

Os closed his eyes, thinking back to how she'd allowed him to travel back in time with her and to be inside her
dreams. He didn't want her burned at the stake, or put to other witch's tests just because he was having a difficult time accepting a new truth. “I can't say.”

“Pah.” Brother William sat back with a snort.

“She makes me feel … important.”

“That's women's magic, boy, and if we were to tell the church officials about that they'd shoot an arrow in your heart to put you out of your misery.”

Frustrated, Os said, “Yes—and is it natural to have a polecat for a pet?”

“As in a weasel? A rodent?”

“Aye. She saved the varmint from dying when she found him caught in a trap.”

“She doesn't sound very evil, this woman you don't deserve. Give me something really bad, and then mayhap I can help you.”

Really bad?

“Has she ever harmed another person? With intent?”

“Nay. She's a healer,” Os added with a point of the blade of grass.

“Well, instead of witnessing magic, mayhap you are witnessing miracles. I say that your Sir Percy was a decent knight, but he had his own foul history with the fairer sex. Methinks a woman did him wrong, and like any decent mentor, he sought to save ye from making the same mistakes.”

Sir Percy could be wrong
.

Wrong. The concept of it was big, and the results overwhelming. He'd lived his entire life trying to be absolved
by the only man who knew his faults, and who had loved him despite them.

“Perhaps overzealously?” Brother William's probing gaze was kind and scored a direct bull's-eye.

“I deserved punishment.” He took a deep breath. “This night is one of those that demand confessions. I will tell you my story, and then you will see why Sir Percy had to take such a hard tack with me.”

“For certes—wait!” He pulled a wineskin from a secret recess of his dark brown robes. “Drink?”

Os took the skin and gratefully wet the insides of his mouth. The kick to his belly was a warm balm as well. “Thanks.” He then told the monk about his cheating father, his poor mother, and his three siblings. They had little coin, but there was a time when they'd been happy. “Until Lisbeth caught my father's eye.”

“You blame the village woman?”

“Aye. Sir Percy said that she probably set out to trap him for a fertility right. To steal his manhood.”

“Sir Percy was
definitely
burned by love's fire. Forget what he said about women. His advice on bathing was sound, but the rest of his notions seem more vengeful than wise.”

Os bowed his head. “He took me in, when I would have died.”

“He obviously was a good man, son, but not perfect. Who is? And thanks be to God that He accepts us with all of our imperfections.”

“Do you think that God will forgive me my selfish,
emotional action—that caused my family to die?”

“What? Are you wearing a hair shirt beneath that tunic? By all the saints”—Brother William made the sign of the cross—”you are infected with guilt. Have ye ever thought to wonder if ye were chosen by God to be one of the saved? The plague is highly contagious, and it is a wonder ye didn't die of it anyway! Going to the docks and getting robbed might just have spared your life.”

Os frowned. “But what about not honoring my father?”

“Your da was screwing the village woman, and ye were a lad angry on your mam's behalf. Your reaction was more natural than thinking all women are evil.” Brother William jerked his thumb over his shoulder at the tombstone they were resting against. “Like this one.”

“I was a lad, and my mother was a wonder, always smiling and singing as she worked. She didn't deserve my father's cruelty.” His shoulders sank. “I killed her.”

“The plague killed her. There's no cure for it, as well you know.”

He did know. While in the Holy Land, he'd asked about different cures for illness, and while there were many preventatives, there was no cure once a person infected was already sick.

Reconciling that with his nine-year-old self came hard. “I never had the chance to bury them. Not like this.”

“If you tell me their names, sir knight, I can create a stone and place it next to this one. That way all the memories will be together. Let's pray.”

Os bowed his head beneath the moon and allowed the
memories in: his mam kissing him on the cheek; he and his brother pushing each other into a summer stream; his father … his father clapping him on the back after a hard day of blistering work. His family. Os slowly let the images settle over the ones where they were dead. Feeling the weight on his soul lighten came in small steps, but soon he was able to understand that he'd finally been forgiven.

By an emotion-laden nine-year-old lad.

Ela rode erect in the saddle, defiantly thinking that there was no one about at this hour to see her legs anyway. What did it matter if her ankles showed?

She didn't want to ruin the first pretty dress she'd worn in weeks, so she hiked it up and rode astride.

Henry rested on the saddle in front of her, one paw on the saddle pommel. “Would you go to battle with me, Henry?”

The polecat chirruped, moving his head left to right and back again.

“Are you searching for Os too? I don't know where he could be. I think we've gone by these same houses twice. Look at that pretty church on top of the hill. And—oh St. Agnes, there's a man walking on top of the fence—he could fall. Is he crazy?”

Her stomach sank as she recognized the long legs of Osbert Edyvean.

He hadn't seen her yet, and so was as carefree as a … dare she say it … child? She'd never witnessed his step so light or his shoulders so flexible.

She held her breath as he poised on the edge of the fence, then dove onto the grass and rolled, hurly burly, down the hill.

He landed a spear's length away from her and blinked with surprise. Then he laughed.

Ela quickly dismounted and ran to his side. “Are you hurt? Have ye been drinking?” She sniffed his breath. “Wine. The cheap stuff.”

He grabbed her by the waist and pulled her into his lap. “I'm not drunk, just absolved.”

Leaning backward within the bracing confines of his arms, she stared into his eyes. They spoke to her of love and eternal promises. And sex like she'd only dreamed about.

With him.

She squirmed against the hard length growing from Os's lap, then gasped with realization. “Os?”

Bartholomew neighed, and Osbert gently set her aside before bounding to his feet like a tumbler or an acrobat. She knew her jaw had to be gaping open, so she closed it, but she remained stunned. “Have you knocked your head?”

Full-out belly laughing, he tickled her and led her to the waiting stallion. He lifted her up, letting his hands linger on her waist. “I've had sense knocked into me, ‘tis true. By a monk who pledged chastity. You realize that I may soon be free from my own vow?”

She swallowed, heat building in her veins.

Then he held her hand and brought her knuckles to his lips. With him nibbling one digit and then another, she could barely think.

“I never thought to have the right. But I ask you, in heaven's name—in Boadicea's memory—will you …”

She held her breath, watching his mouth form the words she longed most to hear. “Will you join your life to mine? Marry me, Ela?”

“Osbert!” She threw herself off the back of Bartholomew and slung her arms around Os's neck. “Oh yes. Yes.”

“I love you, Ela. I fought it, for reasons I will explain one dreary evening when we need a story to fill the time. But know this—I stand before you a man charged with love and faith in his fellow man.”

“You—suspicious of everyone—suddenly have faith in man?”

“Aye.” He dropped a kiss on the tip of her nose and let her slide down the length of him. She'd never felt so deliciously feminine. She was tall, but he was taller. She was strong, aye, but he was stronger. He could hold his own in a battle of wits, and thank all the saints, he loved her.

She couldn't stop smiling.

Or remembering how it had felt between them, when they were Ana and Antonias.

“We are going to create new memories,” Os promised, whispering against the sensitive lobe of her ear. Her thighs
tensed with anticipation.

“When?” She ran her hands along his chest, finding him familiar and different at the same time. “Tomorrow seems so far away.”

He stilled, holding her in his arms. “We don't have to wait for the morrow. I say we …”

“Yes?” Ela wondered if he'd changed so much that he could follow his impulse and suggest what they both wanted. Love.

He pressed his lips to the top of her head, his hand gently squeezing her hip. “I know a secluded place, where we could pledge our own troth. Privately.”

Tears flooded Ela's eyes as she eagerly accepted. “I thought you'd never ask.”

Os could hardly believe his good fortune. On the very moment of his epiphany, who should arrive, but his lady, out to rescue a knight in distress?

Releasing the shackles of his own guilt left him free to accept his lady's love and affection. Realizing that Sir Percy had his personal flaws freed Os to make his own way without dishonoring his mentor's memory.

The closest he'd come to this feeling was while praying at the church in the Holy Land. The same contentment filled him. God's teeth, he was happy.

And he was in love with a miracle-performing witch. If
St. Augustine decreed there was no such thing as witchcraft, then who was he to argue?