Healer (12 page)

To her astonishment, the priest shook his head. “Sadly, I cannot. Not until after the Equinox feast at Glenarden. My presence at the keep there is requested. I cannot even keep my seclusion this little bit longer.”

“Has Tarlach found the Lord then?” Hope sprang into Brenna’s heart. If the old chief had come to terms with the feud of the past and present, then there might be hope for a life beyond the limits she had accepted for herself and her future son. Perhaps with her own kin.

“Nay, child, I fear not. His health and mind fail by the day.”

Her hope spiraled down like a wounded bird.

“I am summoned there weekly at the request of Merlin Emrys to educate a young hostage assigned to Glenarden by Arthur’s court,” Martin explained. “A Gowrys prince.”

“What?” Brenna gasped in disbelief. The two clans had raided each other in season since her family’s slaughter, but this was indeed something new.

“And the Glenarden’s youngest son is hostage with the Gowrys. It is Merlin’s and Arthur’s way of keeping each side in check after—” Brother Martin stopped, as though his words had struck a dam.

Or was there something he didn’t want to say? Before Brenna could determine the nature of the pause, the priest continued. “Arthur has lost too many warriors fighting amongst themselves when such men are needed for the summer’s campaign.”

“Then that is indeed a hopeful thing. If only the Dux or his father before him had intervened sooner.” Although, given all she’d heard of Tarlach’s madness, he’d still have hunted her because of her mother’s prophecy. “But I’ll deem the news as a good sign. Perhaps peace will come to our hills after all.” And it would not depend upon her.

“In God’s time.” Martin made the sign of the cross over his chest. “Until then, He has given me much to do and very little time in which to accomplish it.”

“But you will come soon, won’t you?” Brenna asked as she walked with him back to the half-furrowed patch of winter-hardened ground.

“Two weeks,” he promised. “In the interim, let us both pray for God’s will to be revealed to us … and wait upon the Lord.”

Brenna prayed the entire journey up into the hills that concealed her cave. But each time she waited in silence for an answer, nothing came beyond the dream. The dream of her lying clad in naught but nature’s splendor in her husband’s arms. The joy of holding their newborn son. Which meant that Rory might not take his leave of her after all. That they might have a real family.

God, could it be possible?

Familiar words came to her.
With God, all things are possible.

Spurred on by the revelation, Brenna stopped waiting for the ever-curious Faol to check out this sound or that scent. Keeping in the cover of the pine that dotted the higher hills as she climbed slowed her enough. There was much she had to discuss with Rory, though in her heart she already knew their destinies were bound.

The first blue of dusk colored the hillside by the time Brenna reached her cave. Left to his own devices, Faol had wandered off to the west, so she entered the outer chamber alone.

“Rory, I’m back.” She paused in case he needed a moment’s more privacy. Upon hearing no answer, Brenna entered, expecting to see her patient sleeping on the pallet. But the bed was empty. A glance at the table showed the bannocks she’d made for his breakfast and nun-day meal were gone as well.

Had Rory left her? Brenna fought her alarm. Nay. He was not strong enough. Or had she underestimated him?

Chapter Ten

Perspiration beaded Ronan’s face and caused his shirt to cling to his body. The steep descent, not to mention this eerie pit with its visible hot breath, was hardly the wonder Brenna had described. He felt as though he’d staggered into a dragon’s mouth and down its long throat. The muscles of his legs had cramped as though clenched between unseen teeth. He’d suffered such cramps before, sometimes awaking him from sound sleep, but these were the worst. And now that he’d reached the dragon’s belly, his limbs trembled like a newborn foal’s.

By all the gods of this heathen place, for the animals and figures etched on the stone passage walls by ancient hands marked it as such, he’d never make it back up to Brenna’s chamber on his own. How this place could be described as invigorating was beyond him. It sapped his strength. Each breath he took smothered him, leaving him lightheaded.

He had no idea how much time he’d passed focusing on the dome-like chamber that gradually took shape in the dim light of his lamp. Had he stumbled at the bottom instead of sinking against the wall, he might well have plunged into the murky water just a few lengths of an arm from where he sank to rest.

As his eyesight adjusted more, Ronan made out a ledge hacked out by human hands. There sat several candles, burned down to differing heights. Inscribed over them on the wall was a cross, declaring the site no longer pagan, but blessed for the purposes of God. He struggled up on his knees and, using the flame of the oil lamp he’d brought with him, lit the lot of them before blowing out the lamp to conserve oil for the journey back. Exhausted, he closed his eyes and sank down near the ledge of the pool.

Would that his assailant had killed him and spared him this slow death. His sword arm was heavier than his weapon. Walking
downhill
sapped him of strength. But the loss that tormented him the most was that of his manhood.

This morning he’d awakened to find Brenna asleep in his arms. The sight of such innocence and beauty in sweet repose, the warmth of her curves pressed against him should have lit signal fires across the highlands. Yet nothing beyond the fire in his mind stirred. Nothing. He’d feigned sleep when she stirred and hastily wriggled out of his embrace as though burned by it.

But how could she know she had so little to fear?

Jaws clenched, Ronan slid forward, determined to be restored in this marvelous spring or drown trying. He tested the depth and found it shallow enough to sit in, at least as far as his extended foot could detect. The water was pleasantly warm. Though it appeared still, he could feel the slow-moving current flow from the yawning back of the cavern and out through what had to be a fissure in the opposite wall. Ronan’s shirt billowed as he eased in the rest of the way. He should have taken it off, but his thoughts weren’t the clearest.

This would save Brenna from having to wash it. How he wearied of this helplessness and her having to wait on him—

As if he’d conjured her in his mind, Ronan heard her voice in the distance. Her panic.

“Here,” he shouted back. The reverberation in the small domed chamber nearly deafened him. But as it subsided, he thought he made out the sound of her making her way down the passage.

“I told you”—her disembodied voice traveled ahead of her—“not to come down here. What … if you … had fallen?”

Ronan smiled, picturing the indignation flashing in her gaze that he dared to disobey her. Not because she wanted to control him, but because she really cared. Of that, he had no doubt. Brenna had nothing to gain by saving his life and nursing him back to health. She said she did so because she was a healer, but it was more than that. Brenna of Gowrys embodied love. A love Ronan hadn’t believed existed.

“I cannot believe you were so foolish as to come down here alone!” Her face flushed from the rush down the passage, Brenna halted at the sight of him sitting peacefully in the pool.

“As you can see, I am just fine. Stronger than you thought,” he replied, with only a pang of guilt for not admitting she was right. Taking in her boyish attire piqued his curiosity. “You were gone a long time today. Where would you go that you need to present yourself as a laddie?”

“It was a fine day for a long walk and … and I needed some time to myself. Time to think … and pray.”

Ronan lifted one brow. “And what do you pray for, Brenna of the Hallowed Hills?”

“Your healing.” She tugged off her woolen cap, sending perspiration-damp black hair tumbling in disarray about her shoulders. “’Tis hotter than a baker’s oven in here.” Without a hint of self-consciousness, she pulled her woolen tunic over her head and dropped it beside the cap.

No silk-bedecked female had ever been so fetching as the one standing before him in plain linen shirt and breeches with deerskin boots laced to the knee. Ronan helped himself to a palm’s dip of water.

“I’ve been doing a lot of thinking,” she announced, dropping to the ledge, cross-legged.

Intense blue eyes delved into his, touching a part of him he kept hidden deep within, yet he resisted the urge to look away. “About?”

“You
, who else?” she said with a snap of annoyance. “I can see you healing by the day—”

“You gave me no choice, milady. The sweetness of your voice drew me back from the Other Side as surely as I sit here.” And it kept him in This World. She’d given him something worth staying for. Although after this morning, he had his doubts.

Her expression grew puzzled. “But life is a gift, Rory. Too precious to wish away. How could a man like yourself not want to live?”

“My life has been no gift, Brenna. No man should see the things I’ve seen, or done … some of the things I’ve had to do. It’s the lot of … a soldier of fortune.”

“I saw some of those things, Rory,” she reminded him. “You must let them go, or you will never be whole, never live the life God has planned for you.”

“It’s not that simple.” What would she know of the complexities of life? She’d grown up protected from them.

“But it
is
that simple … at least on God’s part. It’s us that makes it complicated.”

And everyone and everything around us.

“How long have you been down here?” she asked, changing the subject.

“I only just made it into the water.”

“Hmm.” She hefted up one leg and began unlacing her boots.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m going to strip mother naked and jump in with you.” She met his gaze head-on and took in his reaction straight-faced … for as long as she could. Dissolving into laughter, she focused on the laces of her boots again. “Fear not, I only mean to soak my feet. It was a long hike down to the glen and back.”

Her feet. Heaven help him, the vision that leapt to his mind was not of her feet. If she was half as goddess-like as he imagined, his racing blood would set the pool to bubbling. If he were but half the man he’d once been …

“Then milady had best not be making promises she has no intention of keeping.”

“Perhaps milord should avoid pursuing thoughts he has no—” Self-conscious, she glanced away. “My apologies, Rory. I only meant sport.”

She knew. She knew of his impotence. Brenna of Gowrys might be a practiced healer, but guile eluded her. It was part of her charm and his curse.

She hauled off first one boot, then the other. Off came the stockings, revealing slender white calves and ankles in keeping with his imagination. She stopped to toy with her toes, separating and wiping imaginary sand from them.

By his worthless bones, this unwitting seduction was far more powerful than that of an accomplished temptress.

Even so, not powerful enough. “Are you going to soak your feet or not?”

Brenna started at the sharpness in Ronan’s voice. “Clearly the calmative effects of the pool still have much work to do.”

She rolled her breeches above her knees and with a wriggle that Ronan’s stomach imitated, inched to the edge of the pool next to him. With a calculated look, she slapped her feet into the water, splashing him in the process.

“Is milord of discontent happy
now?”

Ronan didn’t answer. Instead, he eased his head back against the floor of the cave and closed his eyes. This misery was far worse than the pain and fever.

Brenna watched Rory as he slept, or feigned sleep to ignore her. He was getting restless, like any animal used to wandering free, and frustrated that he couldn’t do as he pleased just yet. When she saw his cloak and breeches where she’d put them, her initial panic at Rory’s disappearance had turned to confusion, for surely he’d not have left them behind. It was then she realized where he’d gone: to satisfy his curiosity about the warm spring she’d talked about….

“The water does seem to do my legs well, even if it hasn’t improved my temperament,” he had said after they’d sat in the warm pool for a long while.

An apology. Likely as much as he could muster. Brenna chuckled. “Mayhaps I should hold your head under then.”

“No, I mean what I say.” He sounded surprised. “On the way down, my legs rebelled fiercely against me. The muscles nearly bound me over.”

He should have waited for her. “And now?”

“They no longer plague me. They feel”—he searched for a word—“
restored
 …” He shook his head, as if that wasn’t it. “Stronger.”

“The fevers burn away at the body’s muscles, like the sun does to dried meat. But there is something in this water that restores what the fever took away.” Brenna rose to her feet. “Come now. Your fingers and toes will start to wrinkle.”

“What kind of place was this? A pagan temple?”

“Before the water men came, most likely it was dedicated to Sulis, goddess of healing waters. But it has been a holy place since God created it, whether credit was given to Him or nay.”

Brenna stood ready to help if Rory needed it. It pleased her that he did not.

“Water men?”

“Aye, our first Christian fathers. This was used for healing and for baptism, just as Saint John the Baptist used water. To wash away sins, that man might start afresh, learning and loving God. Merlin said there were many such places all over the isle.”

Rory’s brow shot up. “Which merlin is that?”

“I’m thinking his name was Emrys. I was just a little girl, but he visited once or twice with us and told the most wondrous stories. A strapping man he was, with black hair and expressive blue eyes. He was your Arthur’s teacher, just as Ealga was mine. Can you imagine being tutored by the wonderful Merlin? Though he did say I was most bright for my age.”

Rory stared at her in wonder. “You have friends in very high places, Brenna of the Hallowed Hills.”

“It’s Brother Martin who has the friends. Although Emrys is the only one he ever brought here.”

“Martin.” Rory mulled over the name, wringing the long tail of his shirt dry.

“Aye, I went to see him today. He’s most anxious to meet you.”

At this, wariness invaded Rory’s demeanor. “Is he the priest in the glen near the river?”

“The same. He’s known me ever since I can remember. In fact, he gave me my religious training.” She glanced about. “I don’t suppose you remembered to bring down towels?”

Clearly, from Rory’s scowl, he hadn’t. “What did the good Brother have to say about me?”

“Only that he looks forward to meeting you. ’Twas I that did most of the talking. I told him about the attack and how Faol came to your rescue. And how the fever nearly took you.”

“Did he say anyone was looking for me?”

Brenna caught her breath at the alarm on Rory’s face. Of course the murderer would be searching for him … if the coward had nerve enough to return after being attacked by a wolf and a ghostly bowman.

She caught Rory’s face in her hands. “Don’t worry your head over his telling anyone about you. He’s kept my whereabouts secret for years. He’ll do nothing to endanger either of us. He’s a good man.”

The corner of Rory’s mouth twitched. “You see good in everyone, Brenna. Even the likes of me.”

“Especially in you, Rory of the Road.” The words spilled out before she could stop them, baring a heart about to burst. “I thank God for sending you to me.”

Brenna knew she should look away from that warm russet appraisal. The line she’d drawn between her feelings and Rory dissolved with each breath she took.