Prisoner of the Flames (Leisure Historical Romance) (15 page)

“There, Father, is my home,” the man panted. “I told you it wasn’t far. Hurry, please…she is all alone.”

“What ails her,” said Robert, “what is her complaint?”

“A…a…fever,” the man faltered. But there was no time to question him further. They were upon the threshold.

Violette stiffened as soon as the peasant threw the door open. The stench of disease rushed to meet them before they even entered. Her heightened sense of smell told her all too clearly that they had entered an unclean place. It tasted of death indeed, and she shrank back from it, burying her nose in the coarse homespun folds of Robert’s sleeve. And as they drew nearer the deathbed she felt the muscles beneath that sleeve constrict and freeze as rigid as stone beneath her face.

Robert took up a candle from its stand and held it low, illuminating the stricken woman’s face. Violette felt the heat of it, and she lurched as his breath caught, for the woman lay breathing her last through a death rattle. Cold chills gripped Violette ‘s spine as she recalled the same sound coming from her aunt’s throat just before she passed. She had been just a child, but the memory was so vivid it was as though it was happening all over again, and she tightened her grip upon his arm.

“This is plague here!” Robert breathed, supporting Violette as she cried out, quaking against him at the news. “She sweats. The fever rages! This canker on her neck, see how it oozes? I have seen it many times. Why did you not tell me, man?”

“Forgive me, Father,” the peasant whined, “would you have come if I had?”

“It is too late for confession,” Robert gritted. “She is in coma.”

“No!” the man cried. “She is still conscious. See her eyes? They move! She is aware still. I beg you anoint her!”

Robert swallowed audibly, slipping the stole and pot of unction from the folds of his robe. Without further waste of words, he hurried through the prayers, anointed the woman, and hurried Violette out into the cool, rain-washed air.

The tearful little man followed after, spouting gratitude
with each jerky step, but Robert didn’t respond. He let her go then, groping the pocket of his robe. Her hands, searching for him, felt the jar of lozenges that Nostradamus had given him. As he removed the stopper and thrust one toward the peasant, she shrank back from the smell.

“Carry this in your mouth; it is a remedy,” Robert instructed the peasant, demonstrating by way of forcing one through her unsuspecting lips, and then his own. “Throw the door and windows wide, and wait. When your good lady wife has died, bury her at once, and burn each and every thing she has come in contact with from bedding to trencher—your clothing as well, and wash your whole body in clean water. May God have pity on you.”

He turned then, and led her quickly away through the needles of rain stabbing down over the meadow to the forest, where the horse waited. Neither spoke until they had put some distance between themselves and the contaminated cottage. Clutching him close as they galloped through the darkness, Violette could still feel the tightness of anger in his well-muscled body, stiffened like marble against her through the coarse homespun robe, the heat of him so intense it was as though the blood had come to a boil in his veins. Between the horse’s motion, and the foul-tasting lozenge, a queasy feeling settled in the pit of her stomach, and bile rose in her throat. Though she almost feared to break the pregnant silence, it was no use. She could no longer bear it.

“I cannot abide the remedy,” she wailed. “I will retch! The taste…it is unbearable!”

“You will bear it,” he spat.

“I will
retch
, I say!”

“You will not!” he commanded. “You would indeed have retched if you could have seen the sight of what I pray that damned remedy you revile so might spare you. Do not be a child. I cannot abide such as that here now.”

“Can you at least slow our pace, then?” she pleaded. “I beg you! My stomach rejects this thing.”

“Not until we have put this place behind us,” he said. “Who is to say that what we have just left behind was an isolated case? More likely than not, the plague is widespread in these parts. I will be ill at ease until we reach the convent. I am sorry for your discomfort, lass, but you must trust my judgment. I will bear no more burden on my conscience over you.”

She groaned again, but he didn’t seem to notice, or feel her body constrict against him as she shivered and spat out the lozenge. She opened her mouth letting the rain in to wash it out, but not even that could rid her of the awful aftertaste the pastille had left behind.

It was well past midnight before they had finally purged the stench of plague with distance. Violette was exhausted, and wracked with chills in her wet habit, but she dared not complain. Something in the silence between them then—something in the stiff unbending posture that she clung to—told her all too well that he was still angry. Now, she sensed a facet of trepidation mingled with the rest that hadn’t been there before. But she left that unexplored. Blind as she was, she saw quite clearly that this was no time for probing. Instead, she let him settle her beside the roots of an ancient oak tree, accepted the dry blanket he took from the sack, and slept.

R
obert was weary of the journey and the worry and the
burden of thoughts he fought not to think, and feelings he struggled not to feel, his shoulder notwithstanding. The eager warmth of Violette ‘s lush, supple body so close in his arms haunted him. The tender pressure of those pouting, heart-shaped lips trembling open beneath his own set his heart racing. A throbbing rush of icy fire gripped his loins when he recalled the touch of her petal-soft tongue, mating with his as he tasted her deeply. He relived the arousal that kiss had ignited, and it revisited him, more startling for the distance between them, and, to his horror, more acute.

He inched nearer the place where she lay. A wan, lackluster moon had broken through the clouds at last, and a shaft of its dappled light played softly upon her face through the trees. How gently it haloed her hair. How seductively it teased the rise and fall of her firm, uptilted breasts beneath the blanket. That they were hidden from view didn’t matter. His mind’s eye remembered, and he saw them just as vividly as he had at the Huguenot village, tinted a rosy golden hue by the flames. That reverie was so real that he could almost feel the heat of the holocaust. Or was that nothing more than the blood surging hot to his temples? He couldn’t be sure. But whatever it was, it turned him away and kept him at his distance until dawn chased the visions away.

No, he would not succumb to such as that. He would not slake his bitter desperation in this innocent lass, who had invested her trust in his honor, even though he knew she would allow him. Was this love, then? He doubted it. Not
under these bizarre circumstances. She was a woman, and he was sore for wanting one. He could put no other vestments on that specter. No, that was what it was, and he would not tamper with it. There were other vehicles for venting those passions. He had found them before. He would find them again. As repulsive and demoralizing as that prospect was, and despite that he had vowed against it, it suited him far better than the guilt-ridden alternative facing him now. A few more hours and she would tempt him no more. A brief, fleeting space of time, and he would bid farewell to this little sorceress, who had hopelessly muddled his thinking. Perhaps then he could concentrate upon getting safely back to Scotland—a thing that promised to be not so easily accomplished. He’d made no solid plan beyond seeing Violette safely to the nunnery, and with that goal as a prod, the vision of those soft, young breasts with their pink nipples whirling around in his brain notwithstanding, he initiated an early departure, and kept a relentless pace throughout the day.

He decided not to stop for an evening meal. That could be had at the convent, with a warm, dry bed to lie in while he plotted his escape. When daylight faded, he pressed his frazzled mount to continue, for according to the healer’s map, it was only a little farther.

Fresh storm clouds had swallowed the moon momentarily, and the stars along with it. The night was as black as carbon ink around them. The only light for miles appeared as a rosy shimmer along the roadway in the valley below. A closer appraisal was denied him by trees dotting the landscape between. Assuming that whatever the cause of the phenomenon, it had to be close to the nunnery, he headed straight for it, promising Violette that she would soon be safe and warm and dry.

Driving the horse relentlessly, it did not take long to make his approach. The nearer he drew, the clearer the
glow became, until he recognized it for what it was—a string of bonfires along the narrow road. The fire-hemmed track sidled toward a stone fortress, its tall open bell tower with its silent bell inside rising into the night—the convent, silhouetted against the vacant sky like a great black one-eyed giant lurking beyond a walled courtyard.

“
Fires!
” he groaned, recalling the healer’s cryptic augur. “Good Christ, what could this be?”

Violette made no reply. She clung listlessly to him, so listlessly he feared she might fall off. Her head rested heavily against his back, and her tiny hands barely gripped his middle.

Walking the horse now, they passed between the fires flanking them on either side of the road, meanwhile soothing the animal shying away from the crackle and roar of snapping twigs, and rippling heat surging toward them. Straining his eyes, he caught sight of a robed figure shuffling toward them bearing a burden, which she fed to the anxious flames closest to the courtyard. A lively burst of sparks shot upward with the offering, and lit the woman’s face, all but hidden beneath a prohibitive headdress and scarf of linen gauze that bound her nose and mouth. He adjusted his cowl, and as they came abreast of her, she waved them off with both hands held high.

“Go back! Away!” she shrilled. “Good brother, you cannot enter here. The pestilence! Go back, I say!”

“Good sister, I am a monk on sojourn from the south,” he insisted, despite the warning. “I bring a child here for sanctuary. We cannot go back.”

“The sister?”

“She is not a sister, but a blind child from the southern provinces, who has lost all in a fire that ravaged her village.” It was half truth, and he would have to stretch it further, but he couldn’t tell the whole truth. It was far too dangerous—even on holy ground—
especially
on holy ground. “The good
sisters at the convent there provided the garments she wears,” he went on convincingly. “She had naught but the flimsy shift she fled in. They had no room to keep her, and they sent me here. She must have care, and tending. I beseech you—”

“She cannot enter here!” The nun panicked. “You have not heard me…there is pestilence! To let her enter is sure and certain death. We have no remedy. We were forty strong on Tuesday last. Now, four and twenty remain, and half that number have fallen with the sickness.”

“Are there no healers, then?”

The nun uttered a bitter laugh. “The plague has crippled the villages south of here. There are healers there, but not enough in number to meet our needs and theirs as well. The child cannot find sanctuary among us, lest you would bury her. I am sorry. You must turn back! We cannot help you here.”

“Where then? Where do I go? I am a stranger to these parts.”

“North, or east to Paris. There are no reports of pestilence in those quarters yet. I am sorry. God have mercy upon you. There is no mercy here.”

“How many are you did you say?” he queried.

“We are four and twenty living.”

“And half, you say, have fallen sick?”

She nodded.

“That leaves a dozen still untouched.”

“But for how long?” the nun shrilled.

He took the jar of lozenges from the pocket sewn inside his robe, and counted them in the firelight.

“What have you there?” she begged him, braving a step closer.

He sighed. “A remedy,” he said, “but it is not enough. If I keep one patty in reserve for the child, and one for myself, only seven will remain.”

“I implore you, spare what you can—any token!”

“Have them, then,” he said, thrusting the jar toward her outstretched hands. “Carry them in the mouth to forefend the disease. They are a remedy of Doctor Nostradamus.”

“Praise God,” she sobbed, crossing herself. “May He reward you for your kind compassion, good brother.”

“Do not waste them on those who have fallen. I do not know that they will be effective once the plague has taken hold.”

“I grieve that there is nothing I can give you in return, save perpetual prayers for your safety and reward.”

“Pray them, then, and tell no man that we have passed this way. The child, in her innocence, gave aid to one sought by the troops of Coligny. She will be imprisoned…or worse if they find her, for naught save Christian charity.”

“Coligny, the heretic?” She gasped, and crossed herself.

“The same. Can we depend upon your silence, sister?”

“I have not seen you, good brother, but God has. He will keep you safe. We will all pray for that.” She turned then, pointing toward a dense weald behind. “The forest path will lead you northward toward the channel. There is a stream nearby, where you might refresh yourselves, and your poor beast. Should you decide to return as you have come, you will reach Paris in two days’ time.”

“Are there other convents in the north?” he urged.

She shook her head. “We are the last, but in Paris—”

“Thank you for your guiding, good sister,” he interrupted. “Forgive me, but we must press on. We will find a haven somewhere. God keep you.”

“And you, good brother. We will pray!” she shouted after them, for they had moved on.

They were well inside the forest before he slowed the horse’s pace. Passing one of the two remaining lozenges to Violette, he sighed. “Have it now,” he charged. “Let it dissolve slowly in your mouth.”

“I cannot bear the taste,” she cried, shuddering against him.

“I will force the damnable thing down your throat whole if you do not obey me!” he promised. Looking over his shoulder, he watched while she took it in her mouth, then turned back again, and did so several times more before he gave his full attention to the dark, narrow forest path ahead.