Dragon Tree (6 page)

“Guard that it
does not boil.” And to Tamberlane, he asked, “Has she wakened at
all?”

“Once. Back at
the river.”

“Was she able
to speak?”

Tamberlane
nodded. “A few words only. But they were tumbled and made no
sense.”

Marak fetched
a large square of linen from one of the shelves and tore it into
two equal strips. Folding them into two thick wads, he sprinkled
more herbs and powders between each layer and by the time he
finished, steam was rising off the surface of the posset. He
removed the pot from the fire and divided the contents evenly
between the two poultices.

As carefully
as he could, Marak cut away the gut string tethers binding the iron
arrowhead to the shaft. He felt gingerly beneath the girl’s
shoulder and found the splintered bits of wood where the bolt had
snapped in her fall over the river embankment. Straightening again,
and without further ado, he used his forefinger to push the shaft
quickly through the flesh and pull it out the other side. Both ends
of the wound filled instantly with fresh blood, but there was no
gushing. He then took one of the herb-soaked poultices and laid it
beneath her shoulder, the other one on top, and pressed down with
much of his weight for several counts of ten before easing off and
peering under the corner of the uppermost wadding.

Satisfied that
the heart vein had not been severed, he finished cutting away the
shreds of her tunic.

Roland, who
had seen many a naked maid, scarcely followed the proceedings. He
was anxious to be away, to join the hunters in regaling the castle
minions with tales of the attack and their bravery in foiling
it.

Tamberlane,
whose experience with female nudity had been severely limited by
his vows of celibacy, found it disconcertingly easy to stare at the
pale white body if he allowed himself to do so. To avoid the
temptation, he moved back and stood beside the hearth. After
unbuckling his belt and pulling his tunic over his head, he tossed
the bloodied garments at Roland with a nod to indicate the squire
could leave. He then leaned over a large bowl of water and used
another scrap of cloth to wash the girl’s blood off his chest and
shoulder. The gash on his arm was neither deep nor debilitating,
but the skin would require a few knots of thread to hold the edges
together while it healed.

The newly
kindled flames in the hearth bathed his upper body in red and
orange light, sparkling off the beads of water that clung to his
skin. Long, flame-burnished waves of dark hair—grown thick and full
over his once-tonsured pate—curled over broad shoulders that had
been strengthened over the years to carry a hundredweight of mail
and armor. Shorter, curlier hairs covered his chest like a
breastplate, while smoother, silkier down darkened his forearms. He
was a tall man, solid in the waist and hip. His legs were long and
tautly thewed, his hands square and hard.

No one who saw
him doubted that he could slay dragons. Only Marak knew the mighty
knight could be unravelled, undone, and brought to ground by a
single touch from a lady’s soft hand.

“Whoever cut
this girl, had no love of women,” the seneschal remarked, frowning
over the slashes that ran from the girl’s ankles to the juncture of
her thighs.

Tamberlane was
drawn reluctantly into the circle of light again and followed
Marak’s pointed finger to the cut above the golden thatch of pubic
hair. The yellow curls were still pink with blood, bringing forth
another memory of a painting he had been shown during his induction
as a Templar, when it was declared that all women were the
daughters of Eve. The monks were told that a woman’s sex was
constantly bloody from their roles as whores and temptresses for
Satan. They were also warned that good men, devout men had lost
their wits, their souls, their very lives worshiping at the
bloodied altar of carnal sin.

The green eyes
travelled higher, touching on the girl’s face.

She did not
look like Satan’s whore. She looked fragile, broken. The shape of
the wound in her shoulder made him curious enough to pluck the
arrowhead off the table and examine it.

The points
were hooked and jagged, the iron meant to tear the flesh rather
than simply pierce it, thereby insuring that it would do more
damage if an attempt was made to pull free. The girl was lucky
insofar as it had been driven straight through.

Tamberlane
curled his fist around the arrowhead. His eyes rose, glowing an
eerie green in the muted light, and he was not surprised to find
Marak watching him.

The seneschal
had lowered his hood, the better to work without encumbrances. His
hair was as white as sun-bleached parchment, surrounding a face
that was long and thin, the skin devoid of color even to the lips
that were lacking the smallest hint of definition. His eyes were as
clear as well water, rimmed in pink, shielded by lashes that were
fine and white.

Anything
stronger than muted candlelight caused excruciating pain to those
sensitive eyes, and a beam of unfiltered sunlight could scorch his
skin red after a few moments exposure. All of his vast knowledge,
his experiments with alchemy and herbal medicines could gain him
little relief from his own curse, condemning him to a world of
shadows and heavy woolen garments.

“The peasants
committed no crime,” Tamberlane said, his eyes searching Marak’s
for an explanation. “It was just a poor village with nothing to
hide.”

“Nothing that
you could see, perhaps,” Marak amended carefully.

“Nothing worth
searching for. They burned the huts without a care to what was
inside. They slaughtered the people and livestock without
pause.”

“And you are
thinking that perhaps they were not merely attacking the
village.”

“The vill is
on my land.”

“Not all blame
for all crimes can be laid on your shoulders, Ciaran. If it was,
indeed, an enemy seeking vengeance, he would surely have ridden up
to the gates. It is no great secret where the Dragonslayer
lodges."

Tamberlane
closed his fingers around the arrowhead and squeezed. "I was told
that Hugh de Bergerette is back in England. He lost an arm that day
on the road to Jerusalem. Perhaps he seeks a greater vengeance than
the tribunal proscribed."

Marak shook
his head. “It does not make sense that he should come now. Not
after all this time.”

“Some men have
longer memories than others.”

Marak started
to draw a sheet of linen over the girl’s naked body, but stopped.
He looked at the golden triangle at the junction of her thighs then
tipped his head to cast a curious look at the dull brown plait that
grew from her head.

“We have been
in this fog-ridden England of yours for three years now,” he
murmured, “and I have determined that your countrymen will attack
almost anything or anyone without much provocation. That aside,” he
dropped the sheet in place and turned to rinse his hands in the
barrel, “the fact that you live and breathe solely because your
veins flow with Glanville blood would be more than enough cause for
some to pick up a stone and clout you with it.”

“Then they
should attack me, not innocent peasants.”

“What better
way to attack you than strike out at innocents, since it was
because of the innocents that you found yourself questioning your
purpose in Outremer. How many challenges to fight have you refused?
How many times have the righteous stood at the gates and banged
their shields hoping to get you to answer with your sword?”

The knight
tossed the arrowhead aside. "As you have often reminded me, insults
are just words and words are but air with sound. Ignore them and
they shiver away to nothingness."

"Indeed, words
can be ignored. But bodies come with a deal more substance and are
harder to disregard."

Tamberlane
glanced down at the girl. “Will she live?”

The seneschal
shrugged. “I can do little more than ply my simple medicines and
hope it is enough to let her breathe one more day.”

“If she
wakens, send for me, no matter it should be day or night.”

Marak nodded,
knowing full well the Dragonslayer never slept. He knew the
warrior, no longer a monk, paced most nights away reluctant to
close his eyes, unwilling to lay himself bare to the nightmares
that continued to haunt him.

A lesser man
might have flung himself from one of the castle turrets by now, and
in truth, there were times Marak hid in the shadows on the
wall-walk watching the troubled knight stare out over the parapets,
his hands gripping the stone, his face turned into the night wind.
A simple matter to climb onto one of the crenellated teeth and cast
off the mortal world. As someone confined to perpetual darkness,
Marak had considered it many times himself, and his torment was not
half so great as that of his friend.

"She'll not
waken any time soon. Put your arse to the stool and let me tend
that arm of yours."

"A mere cut,"
Ciaran said, waving his hand.

"Mere insect
bites have festered and turned a limb black enough it had to be cut
off. Now sit and bite down on a leather strap if you think the
prick of needle and thread might be too much to bear."

Tamberlane's
eyebrow inched upward. "Tell me again why I tolerate your presence
here?"

"Because we
are both outcasts. And because if it were not for me, you would
have lost your head back on the beach at Arsuf."

Tamberlane
sighed. "I often wonder if that was a blessing or a curse."

Marak studied
the deep circles beneath Tamberlane’s eyes, then set about steeping
another brew that would not only dull the pain of having a needle
and thread drawn through the wounded arm, but would provide the
tormented knight a few hours of dreamless sleep.

He was not
hopeful the latter would succeed, for he doubted there were possets
strong enough in all the land that would be able to burn the
nightmares out of Tamberlane’s soul.

CHAPTER THREE

Amie rose
slowly out of the depths of darkness like a bubble of air rising to
the surface of thick oil. She regained consciousness through
fragments of sensation, the first being heat and pain, the second
being the pungent sting of incense in her nostrils. The closer she
rose to the light, the stronger the taint became until the smell
became a taste at the back of her throat, acrid and bitter, begging
for water to ease it.

Her body ached
everywhere. Fever raged in her blood, coursing through a body that
shivered uncontrollably despite the flames that consumed her.

The blackness
behind her closed eyelids took on a reddish hue, hinting at a
source of light somewhere beyond her grasp. Sounds emerged from the
void, muffled and terrifying at first, for the last thing she
remembered was the prick of a sword between her thighs. Was she now
lying somewhere impaled and helpless, kept alive on the whims of
her tormentor?

Amie turned
her head to the side by slow degrees and tried to focus on the
light. Seen through the crusted spikes of her lashes, it was no
more than a blurred glow, a distorted splotch of orange that
emanated from a fire blazing in a nearby grate. Like a moth, her
gaze was drawn toward it. She stared until her eyes felt scalded,
until her vision drowned in a stinging liquid that made seeing
anything impossible.

Something in
the shadows moved. It detached itself from darker shadows beside
the fire and approached the table on which she lay. She could not
move her head, the effort to turn it once had been too dear. She
could not see who or what stood over her, but a whimper shivered in
her throat as a cool, wet cloth was pressed over her cracked lips.
It dabbed her cheeks and blotted the heat off her neck and chest.
Dipped in cool water again, it stroked gently down between her
breasts, then ran the length of each arm, each leg. A hand cradled
the back of her head and raised her up enough to tip a cup against
her mouth, but she was shaking too hard and the liquid spilled down
the sides of her chin and puddled at the base of her throat.

“Drink, Little
One, drink. It will ease the pain, I promise.”

Amie rolled
her eyes open but the voice had no face. It was just a shadow
blocking out the light.

“You are safe.
You have nothing to fear. There are strong walls around you now and
many men with swords to guard you against further harm. Believe
what I say, for I speak only the truth.”

The shadow
leaned forward again and the cup was tipped to her mouth a second
time. She managed to swallow a few drops, then a few drops more,
but the liquid was bitter and she nearly gagged on the taste.

“You have done
well, Little One. Better this time than the last. A moment, no
more, and the pain will fade. By all my skill, it will fade.”

He reinforced
his soothing words with gentle strokes of the cool cloth and Amie
spiralled slowly, gratefully back into the darkness.

~~

“She is still
alive?”

“It would seem
as though she does not want to leave this life so easily. The
maggots have done their work at last and the wound is clean. The
fever, also, has finally broken.”

“Has she
wakened at all?”

“A moment here
or there, no more.”

“Has she
spoken?”

“The fever
talked, but said very little that made sense.”

Amie had come
awake at the sound of voices but had not moved or made a sound to
betray that fact. There was still pain in her body, the worst of it
concentrated in her left shoulder.

The arrow.
Jesu
, she remembered now. She had been running, trying to
reach the safety of the forest, and the arrow had struck her in the
back. She had found the river... but a fall... then more pain...
then the figure of a knight standing over her, his sword drawn, his
eyes blazing with bloodlust behind the hammered iron nasal of his
helm.