The Rose at Twilight (8 page)

“I am as limp as a rag,” she muttered, “and my skin feels as if it might crack, like a hide that has been dried in the sun.”

“Both feelings will pass,” he said. “I shall leave you to Mistress Hawkins now. Let her feed you.” He said the last as though he thought she must be commanded to allow Jonet to serve her, but before she had time to protest, he was gone.

Jonet said quietly, “We thought we had lost thee.”

“I do have the sickness then,” Alys murmured. “I thought that must be it. But why did I not die?”

“We thought tha’ didst, just before yon fever broke. Tha’ wert wild wi’ it,” she went on, her renewed distress evident to anyone who knew her by the stronger hint of Yorkshire in her accent. “Tha’ fought me till I couldna hold thee. That were when Sir Nicholas came and said he’d look after thee himself. He said women sometimes do survive, though men rarely, and he meant to see thee through. But then, after the wildness, tha’ wert so still we thought thee gone. He shouted at thee, bellowing thy name, and commanding thee to live. And when tha’ didst stir, I thought the lad would weep like a wee bairn. Though he did no such thing,” she added more briskly, recollecting herself.

“I suppose you think him kind,” Alys said, “but he did say before that he will be blamed for aught that happens to me.”

“Aye,” Jonet agreed, but her tone was dubious. “’Twas a dire sickness, my lady, terrible to behold. Before you grew so wild, we had that herb woman here—the same as stayed with his lordship—but Sir Nicholas sent her away when she said giving you water would kill you. He said he could not believe it would do any such thing. You were crying out for it so, and you were so hot! He just wanted to cool you, I think. He
is
a kind man, mistress, for all that he be a Welshman and at one with the Tudor.” She held up a horn mug. “Drink this now.”

Alys sipped slowly. She could taste herbs and the flavor of beef, and it was good. She wanted more, but Alys shook her head. “He said you must not drink too much at once, or drink too fast.”

“He also said there was bread.”

“Aye, and so there be, but you are not to have it till we see you do keep this broth within.” Her voice sounded weary, and Alys looked at her. Jonet’s expression was haggard and careworn, and her eyes were dim, lacking their usual sparkle.

Fear leaped within her. “Jonet, are you ill?”

“Nay, my lady, only a wee bit tired. He told me to sleep, but ’tis not likely I could do so with my lamb ailing, and so I told him. But he is not a man to cross, I can tell you. The way he spoke when I refused to lie down made the blood freeze in my veins, so I did not dare argue when he ordered me to go away.”

“He ordered you away?” Alys sipped again.

“Aye,” Jonet told her. “To begin, he let me lie down on my pallet yonder, but when he saw I was not likely to sleep there, he sent for one of his men to take me to another tent and see me laid down. ’Twas a lout name of Hugh with a lot of other names after, like Sir Nicholas has, and the biggest man I ever laid eyes upon. An ugsome brute. Sithee, when I tell you he be the same as flogged poor Ian … well, I shall say no more, but if I were a more timid sort nor what I am, he’d fair have raised the gooseflesh on my skin, and that be the truth of the matter.”

“But what did he do?”

“He took me to another tent, yonder, and fetched out blankets, making it clear he meant to cover me with his own hands. But I was not going to allow that, I can tell you. I told him that he could take himself off, but he just stood like Goliath and said he would wait till I slept. Called me his wee minikin, too, as if I were six and not nigh onto five-and-thirty years of age. Have you ever heard the like?”

“Well, if he did not harm you,” Alys murmured sleepily, “I suppose he must have …” But she lost the thread of what she had been going to say, and her voice faded away.

When she awoke the next time, she felt stronger, and when Jonet asked if she might fancy more broth and a bit of bread, she agreed instantly. Jonet signed to someone behind her, and Alys saw Ian MacDougal standing in the entry.

“Wait,” she said when he took the horn mug from Jonet and turned with it toward the entrance, to fetch her broth.

He turned. “Aye, m’lady?”

His soft brogue reminded her of his antecedents, but they no longer mattered. “I do thank you, Ian, from my heart,” she said. “Sir Nicholas told me you rode to fetch bread for me. I know your back cannot be healed yet. ’Twas most kind of you.”

He flushed rosily in the lamplight. “’Twere nobbut a pleasure, m’lady,” he muttered, ducking out on the words.

“That lad has kept close about the tent these two days past,” Jonet said softly, “fair begging to fetch and carry.”

“Two days! Have I been ill so long as that?”

“Aye.”

Alys shifted her position. Her strength was returning, but she still felt as weak as a newborn lamb. And when the covers moved, she instantly became conscious of a noisome odor, and gasped when she recognized its source.

“Jonet, I stink like a summer jakes!” She raised a hand to feel her head, grimacing with distaste. “My hair feels like damp bracken, and it’s as tangled as a bryony hedge. I want a bath.”

“Well, you’ll not be having one yet a while,” Jonet said sourly. “You nearly died, as I’ll thank you to remember, so you must eat up the bread when Ian brings it, and drink your broth, and mayhap we can begin thinking of baths in a day or two.”

“But I want a bath now!” Alys knew it was unreasonable, but the desire to be clean was suddenly overwhelming. Her body was sticky, the bedclothes damp and clinging. She wanted fresh ones, and though she knew the chance of getting them was small, that only made her want them more. When Jonet calmly moved to the entrance of the tent to take the refilled mug and the bread from Ian, then dismissed him and turned back, Alys said sullenly, “I will neither eat nor drink again until I have had a bath, Jonet.”

“Do not be difficult, Miss Alys,” Jonet said with a weary sigh. “Tha’ must eat, and tha’ hast not got enough strength to fling those pillows at me, so do not be thinking tha’ wilt.”

“I will do as I please! Stop treating me like a child!”

“What goes on here?” Sir Nicholas entered, followed by the largest man Alys had ever seen. Dark-haired and dark-eyed, wearing leather breeches and boots, he was a good bit older than Sir Nicholas, and larger. The pair of them filled the tent.

Paying the large man no heed at all, Jonet turned in relief to Sir Nicholas. “She insists she will have a bath, sir. I have told her that she is not to have one, but she has been like this from a child, I fear, and when she sets her mind—”

Alys cut her off with a snap. “Do not babble at him, Jonet! Men never notice how things smell, so he cannot understand how I feel. In faith, he does not care a whit about me, and he cannot want to hear your foolish, whining prattle. Just order up a tub and have it filled the way we did before, and—”

“Just when,” Sir Nicholas inquired mildly, “did you decide that I do not care how you smell? I can assure you that I prefer attar of lilacs to attar of sweating sickness, if you do indeed need to hear such an obvious fact spoken aloud.”

She glared at him, and he turned to Jonet. “Go with Hugh now and have your dinner. I will attend to her ladyship.”

“No!” Alys cried. “Jonet, I command you to stay!”

Jonet hesitated, but though she ignored the large soldier when he gently touched her arm and held the tent flap open, when Sir Nicholas frowned at her, she went without another word.

Alys gritted her teeth when the flap fell into place again, leaving her alone with Sir Nicholas. He picked up the horn mug from the table where Jonet had set it and moved toward her, drawing the stool close to her pallet and sitting down.

“Can you sit up unaided?” he asked.

“I do not know.” She continued to glare at him.

“I can make allowance,” he said evenly, “for a temper made uncertain by illness, but you ought not to speak so sharply to Mistress Hawkins. She has worn herself out with worry over you, so this fractious mood of yours must distress her sorely.”

She opened her mouth to tell him her moods were no concern of his, but his words had struck home, and she shut it again. Her chest ached suddenly, and her throat hurt, and she did not think either of these new pains stemmed from her illness. When her eyes filled with tears, she shut them tight, but she could not stop the tears. They trickled silently down her cheeks.

When she felt his arm move beneath her shoulders, lifting her, she had all she could do to keep from flinging herself onto his chest and sobbing until she could sob no more. The urge startled her and steadied her, and when she opened her eyes at last, she found it was no longer difficult to meet his gaze.

“I should not have spoken so,” she muttered gruffly. “I know not why I am in such a foul humor. I have not treated Jonet so since I was a child. I pray you, forgive me.”

“’Tis not my forgiveness you require,
mi geneth.
Here, drink your broth.”

He held the mug and she sipped from it, watching his face over the rim, wishing he would smile. No doubt, she assured herself, that wish was also born of her illness, for there could be no other good reason for it.

There was little conversation between them after that, but the silences were comfortable, and she felt no need to break them. Nor did Sir Nicholas seem inclined to do so. When she had finished her bread and broth, he helped her lie back again, then picked up his lute and began idly to pluck the strings.

Jonet’s return twenty minutes later was heralded by the sound of her voice. That she was in a militant mood was made clear to Alys, if not to Sir Nicholas, by her complete lapse into the broad Yorkshire speech of her youth.

“Tha’ hast got above thysel’, tha’ great club-fisted gowk! There be no call for thee ta traipse after me like a kitchen cat prayerful o’ scraps. By the look o’ thee, tha’ art well-enow fed no ta go beggin’ fer sich, nor fer other ’n far grander favors!”

“True, my little prickling, but I would see you safe inside,” the big man said cheerfully as the flap was drawn back.

“Safe!” Jonet came through the opening with her hands on her hips, turning as she entered to snap up at him, “Sithee, tha’ great shuttle-brained maggotpate, I’ll be the safer for thy space than for thy presence, as I’ll thank thee t’ remember!”

“Is Hugh annoying you, mistress?” Sir Nicholas inquired.

“Aye,” snapped Jonet. Then, seeing the frown on Sir Nicholas’s face, she recollected herself and added quickly, “Not to say
annoying,
sir. ’Tis only that he will follow after me wherever I go and does prate the grandest absurdities to me. Why, not ten seconds past, he told me I reminded him of a sea beet! Now then, sir, I ask—”

Sir Nicholas chuckled. “A sea beet, Hugh?”

Big Hugh had bent to follow Jonet into the tent, and when he straightened again, Alys was amazed anew at how he dwarfed all around him. “Aye, Nick,” he said in his deep bass voice. “Is her dress not the same soft lavender as that wee flower? Ah, but the sea beet is a sweet thing, and useful. I disremembered that when first I compared our Mistress Andras here to one.”

Sir Nicholas choked back a laugh, and Jonet, more indignant than ever, said sharply, “The name is Hawkins, addlepate.”

Alys, seeing that Sir Nicholas was still struggling to contain his laughter, demanded, “Why does he call her Andras?”

He grinned. “Andras is a goddess—in sooth, a fury—to whom the ancient Welsh felt obliged to offer human sacrifices.”

Jonet’s plump bosom swelled up then till it looked as if it might burst, but she primmed her lips tightly and gave the men a fine view of her back as she moved to straighten Alys’s covering. Alys grinned too, but when Jonet fluffed the covers, freeing the fusty odors again, her grin altered abruptly to a frown.

“Please, Jonet,” she said, “we must contrive a way in which I can be made clean again, or by which the bedding can be aired and refreshed with herbs. I am sorry I was sharp with you before, and that I laughed, but I am dreadfully uncomfortable.”

“My poor lamb,” Jonet said instantly. “I shall order new moss gathered and set fresh bedding to air by the fires at once. That dismal rain has truly stopped for a time, and the men even seem to think we will have sunshine tomorrow. Perhaps, if it grows warm then, we can see about getting you clean again.”

Sir Nicholas said quickly, “You will not bathe so soon after your illness, mistress, so do not think it.”

“I do not want a bath so much as I want someone to wash my hair,” she retorted. “It hurts my head and offends my nose.”

“That may be attended to as soon as it is safe,” he promised her, “but not before. You will do better to sleep now.”

But even though he played the lute and sang for her again, she did not want to sleep. She was uncomfortable and sullen, and disinclined to exert herself to appear to be anything else. “Why do you allow Hugh to call you Nick?” she demanded suddenly.

“He is my second in command,” he said. “His family has long served mine, just as Mistress Hawkins’s has served yours. He was in charge at the castle that night,” he added in a different tone. “He would like to know how you got inside, as would I.”

“I will not tell you,” she said, adding quickly, “He was here in the camp when … when we returned. Jonet said—”

“He had come down to report to me. You must have just missed encountering him on your way up the hill.”

She fell silent then, and to her relief, he did not press her to tell him how she had managed to enter the castle. When Jonet brought fresh bedding, Alys would not let her replace the furs and blankets, or the pallet, insisting that fresh ones would only smell like the old ones in less than an hour. Even Sir Nicholas could not debate that point, and he soon left, recommending again that she ought to sleep.

By the following day, Alys was much recovered and determined to have her hair washed and her body bathed. When Jonet refused to assist her without Sir Nicholas’s permission, she came as near as she had since early childhood to shrieking at her. But Alys was older now, and wiser. She pleaded instead.