Return to Alastair (28 page)

Lucas did not rap at the door as some men might have done. And he didn’t wait for the priest once they were inside. Instead, he led Toddin and Tiarra and their soldier-prisoner toward the back rooms of the cathedral. Ansley had gone to the other street children. They would be watching for the men’s return. Lucas glanced at Tiarra as they walked, remembering her telling him that she would return to the church only when God showed some change in her world. What might she be thinking now?

The tall soldier was considerably older than either he or Toddin. He followed along with them as though he had no more thought of leaving. Still, Lucas could not quite trust him.

“I heard of Martica’s death,” the soldier said, his eyes on Tiarra. “I am sorry, miss.”

Tiarra stared at him for a moment, but she said nothing. “This way,” Lucas told the group, directing them toward a back room. He could hear the priest near them now, but he did not stop.

“Lucas. What are you doing?” Father Bray’s voice sounded shaken, as though he’d already met with enough trouble.

But Lucas didn’t hesitate. “I am providing refuge.” Toddin stood beside him with Tahn limp in his arms.

It isn’t right, Father,
Lucas prayed in his heart.
Tahn has only had one year. Of safety. Of peace. One year of what life could be like. Barely time enough to learn how to begin.

“You endanger the house of God,” the priest spoke gravely. “We war against the baron’s will.”

“Yes,” Lucas replied. “We. If this house is in jeopardy, good Father, it is you who first brought cause for wrath, with your bold lie.”

The small priest came closer. “Forgive me. It was a sin. It plagues me that I might have caused your friend more trouble. There could be hardship from the people should they hear that the bandits do him service.”

Lucas shook his head. “By God’s grace. You pronounced curse with the blessing.”

“I was hoping to thwart the soldiers’ intentions, at least for tonight. The baron’s captain spoke cordially, but I know murder in a man’s eyes when I see it.”

“Then we thank you for the effort.”

“You cannot keep him safe here. He shall have to leave Alastair.”

“You can see for yourself, Father. He’s not able. I feared losing him, just moving him again to come this far.”

“What has happened?”

“Nothing else. I don’t know the sickness. Give us a room, Father. Help us.”

“Please,” Tiarra spoke softly.

The priest stared at her and then turned his eyes to the big soldier who stood with them.

“Help us purge ourselves, Father,” the soldier suddenly added. “He is surely sent here to give Alastair another opportunity. Who is to say what wrath of God there may be if we shut our ears and turn our backs again?”

Lucas looked at the man in surprise. But the priest was slowly nodding his head. “Yes, Emil. I know you are right. These innocents haunt our city.” He turned to Lucas. “I cannot refuse you. But Saud will come back. You can’t stay in here. Come.”

Quickly, he led them through the church and out the back gate. A row of cottages stood behind the church burial grounds on a shadowy street. A sliver of moon peered between clouds at them. The fog was lifting.

“Hurry.”

At the second cottage, the short priest rapped three times on the door and pushed it open. A woman in bedclothes rushed forward with a baby in her arms. The priest motioned them all in and closed the door.

“Dominic—” the woman started, and Lucas looked from her to the priest, stricken by the unexpected use of the priest’s first name.

Another woman, older, stepped from the doorway of another room.

“Catrin, Anain,” the priest said. “These people need your help.”

The younger woman looked very afraid. But the older one simply nodded. “Come. In here.”

Toddin carried Tahn to the second room, to a bed made of limbs, ropes, and a mattress of straw.

“What ails him?” the old woman asked.

“Besides the stripes, we don’t know.” Lucas knew he’d seen these women before, in the church. But why did the priest trust them above others, that he should lead Tahn here?

He looked back to the room behind them and saw Father Bray give his hand to the younger woman and her child. “Catrin,” he was telling her, “we must trust God. To right an injustice, we do his work.”

The woman nodded apprehensively, and Father Bray smoothed a tear from her cheek with the gentle caress of his hand. The baby chuckled and pulled playfully at the priest’s golden cross. And Lucas turned his head abruptly from the strangeness of the scene.

The old woman lit a row of candles. This room was larger than the first. Herbs of all kinds hung from the exposed rafters, giving the place an odd mixture of smells.

“Help me remove his shirt.”

Lucas stepped forward, but Tiarra was there before him. “Don’t cry, child,” the woman was telling her. “I will do what I can.”

“Are you a healer?” Marc asked her. “I knew only of a man on the coppersmith’s street.”

“Some come to me. I was taught it by my father,” the woman answered. “Good that you brought him. He is very sick.” She glanced at Lucas. “He looks like his father. Were it not for that curse, he might have come into this town unknown.”

Carefully, Tiarra helped the healer ease away Tahn’s shirt to reveal the bandages beneath. They were soiled and stained and pulled out of place, and Tiarra could see that they now did him little good. The healer woman began gently to remove them.

“How long since he’s been awake?” the woman asked her.

“Not long. But he’s been with us and gone several times. He . . . he was whipped last morning. And then the fever came on . . . I think it was beginning by the afternoon.”

“Yes. He is warmer than a hearthstone.”

“Will he die?”

The woman looked up into her eyes. “Daughter, no one but God knows the time for any of us.”

Tiarra felt no comfort in her words. No one but God? So much rested upon a mystery she could not see. Though she’d tried to pray in their dark hiding place, still she felt uncertain. The love of God was no guarantee against hardship. Or death. Where was the peace in that?

“I must go back,” the priest was saying. He motioned to the big soldier. “Emil, come.”

“No,” Lucas protested immediately. “I can’t be sure of him.”

“Are you sure of me?” the priest asked.

“I don’t know right now,” Lucas answered honestly.

Father Bray met his questioning gaze. “Know at least that beyond bringing you here, I will do nothing to endanger the people of this house. I would sooner give my life than direct the baron’s men here.”

“Yes,” Lucas answered him. “I think I see that.”

“Perhaps you lose respect for me,” the priest told him. “But I know this soldier’s conscience in the matter, and he will do you no harm. He can help me when the baron’s men return. And you will have to trust us.”

“I’ll go with them,” Toddin said. “I can keep watch.”

Slowly Lucas nodded. “May God watch over us.”

The healer woman reached a handful of herb from a bundle suspended from the ceiling and crushed it into a bowl. Without a word, she moved to the small stone fireplace, hung a pot, and added a chunk of wood to the fire.

Tahn rolled to one side but did not open his eyes.
He would not like this,
Tiarra thought.
He would not like the risk of trusting these people, or even the priest. And Lucas knows that. But what else can we do?

Solemnly Tiarra rose and pulled away the cloth enough to peer out the room’s one small window. The baby began to fuss a little, and Catrin, its mother, sat apart from them and put the child to her breast.

By the moon’s light outside, she could see the short priest and the large soldier making their way back to the church. Were they friends or enemies? The soldier had said that he should have helped Sanlin Dorn. At first she’d thought he must be a wicked man, to conceive of such an idea. But what if Martica had lied as much about her father as she had about Tahn? What if there had been love between her parents? She wanted to know. She suddenly wanted to rush outside and make that man tell her the things he’d seen.

Tears filled her eyes, and she let the simple curtain drop back as she bowed her head. What was real? It seemed so plain now about Tahn. He’d done nothing but try to help her, and paid so largely for it. Had their father been somehow like that too?

Lucas stood near her. “Little sister,” he asked softly. “How can we help you?”

“You can’t,” she said, finding it suddenly hard to keep the tears at bay. “I just don’t understand. All my life I’ve been taught that we came from wicked seed.” She looked up at Lucas but somehow couldn’t voice the questions about her father. She sighed. “The priest said we are innocents. If my brother is an innocent, why does this town still judge him? Why is he in danger from our own kin?”

The healer woman turned her eyes toward them as she washed Tahn’s back. She said nothing but continued to listen. “There is more to the story than they tell,” Lucas was saying. “Perhaps it is easier for Alastair to blame Tahn than to accept blame for their own cruelty. And the baron—I can’t pretend to know what works in his mind. But he must feel threatened in some way, I’m not sure why.”

“I shouldn’t have believed Martica,” Tiarra told him.

“How could you have known any different?”

“I don’t know. Perhaps I couldn’t have. But if I hadn’t hated so much—if I hadn’t distrusted my brother—I might have told him about the necklace. I know I’m at fault in that. If I hadn’t wanted it for myself so badly, he would not be hurt like this. And now he could die.”

“I understand that he didn’t have to do what he did.”

“That makes it no easier.”

“He loves you,” Lucas said softly. “It was a gift.”

Tiarra trembled. “Like Christ’s. I know. Mr. Toddin tried to tell me.”

“Have you trusted God? Do you pray to him?”

“I tried to pray—today. I don’t know if I trust him. I don’t know if he hears me at all.”

“He does,” Lucas assured her. “Every word. Even when it isn’t spoken.”

She stared up at him. “How can I know? How can I believe he cares for us?”

The someday-priest took her arm and helped her to a nearby stool. “By faith we believe our Lord loves us so completely that he walked willingly to torment and the cross. Perhaps he let Tahn be a picture of that for you, going to the whipping post.”

“It’s a hard picture,” Tiarra told him, struggling with the words.

“Yes. But a large mercy. Christ died that all of your sins, in this and in everything else, may be forgiven.”

She shook her head. “I don’t deserve that.”

“No. Neither did I.”

She looked up at him in question. She would never have expected a representative of the church to be so candid about his own failings.

“You simply accept that it is so,” he continued. “Accept the gift that frees you from guilt and hell.”

“I—I don’t want another to suffer for my sake. It isn’t right.”

“It may not seem right. But thank God for his love. It is already done.”

She glanced over at Tahn and thought of the crucifix they had passed in the church. As always, it had made her so uncomfortable that she’d turned her eyes away. “My brother found peace, didn’t he? Because of Christ?”

“Indeed. And he had thought there was no way for him. But God’s love knows no bounds.”

“He has really killed?”

“Many times.”

“It seems unlike him now.”

Lucas nodded. “As far as the east is from the west. With his forgiveness, God brings change.”

She bowed her head. “He wanted to pray with me.”

Lucas smiled. “That is not a surprise.”

“But I’m not sure I can believe the way he believes! How can I accept the Lord’s death for me? My brother in his strength is not able to bear the weight of one crime! Look at him! How can I claim that Christ should have carried so much more for my sake?”

Lucas was quiet for a moment. “Sister, whether you claim it or not, it is finished already. Now you have only to accept or reject what is done for you by Christ’s love.”

“How could I accept it?”

“Tell him you believe. Tell him you gladly receive his sacrifice and his forgiveness.”

Tiarra took a deep breath. “Why would he love me?”

“Because that is what God is.”

She bowed her head, considering. Lucas had said that God brings change. Perhaps that was what she needed, to wash the bitter anger away. “Do you think it would be right?” she asked. “If I try?”

“You mean to pray? Of course. God welcomes you.”

“But . . . now? Before my brother wakes? I mean, if I were to pray with you?”

“The heavens will rejoice. And believe me, your brother will too.”

Tiarra bowed her head with the someday-priest as he led her in a brief prayer she had never heard before. And she felt somehow lighter, as though a load of hurts had been taken off her shoulders. But she turned her eyes to the bed again and saw the old woman, Anain, watching as she spread a strange sort of balm over the open wounds on Tahn’s back.

Tiarra took a deep breath, willing herself to believe he would be all right. She rose to the bedside. “How is he?”

“Good that you pray, child,” the old woman said simply. She took a cool cloth and bathed Tahn’s face, then his arms.

“Is there nothing you can tell me?”

The woman shook her head. “His back is not so sore infected as I thought it might be when first I felt the fever. But he should take some notice of me, at least to pull back when I touch him with the cold water. It is not a good thing, that he is so far away from us in the sickness.”

“Can you help him?” Tiarra pressed.

The healer frowned. “Until he wakes enough to drink medicine, there is little I can do.”

“Mother?” Catrin asked from the next room. “Do you need my help?”

“No. Not now. Get Gabriell to sleep again. I am doing what I can.”

Tiarra sat beside her brother and put her hand on his arm. He felt warmer, if that could be possible. The fever had already been so hot in him before.

“You truly care for your brother, then?” the old woman asked.

Tiarra turned to her in surprise. “How could I not? How could anyone in this town doubt that after seeing what he has done for me?”