Beast (3 page)

Philipe’s eyes were closed, but his breathing was such that she knew he was awake. Before he could open his eyes and see her, the ruin of what she had become, she pulled her veil down and the cowl of her cloak up. Then, she dropped the chest to the half-blackened table and flipped it open noisily.

He startled, blue eyes flashing as they darted about the room. It was his eyes that caught her, and a soft cry came to her throat. Swallowing it away pained her as though she’d swallowed down a chunk of glass. All at once, the despair of the last fifteen years crashed over her, and she braced her hands on the open chest.

If the years had aged him poorly, if he’d grown fat from drink, as she’d imagined would happen, if some pox had ravaged him, as he deserved, she might have been triumphant. The man that lay there was indeed changed by time, but not in the way she had hoped he would be. His face was leaner now, all traces of boyish softness vanished. And while the sharpness that remained left a nose that was a bit hawkish, and hollows at his cheeks, it did not rob him of his handsomeness. Would she have noticed that change, had she been his princess? In the intervening years between the wedding that never happened and the present that could not be, would she have admired the way her prince had grown into a man more handsome than she could have planned?

“Do you have…” his voice scraped from between lips cracked by cold, “Do you have a cup of wine?”

The laugh that tore from her was ugly and harsh. “We have not had wine at Hazelhurn for fifteen years,
Your Highness
. Water is all you’ll have.”

“Water?” There it was. The spoiled edge to his voice that she remembered all those years ago. She’d not liked it then, but she’d made so many excuses for it.

She would not excuse it any longer. “It has been boiled to perfect safety, I assure you. I’ll fetch some, after we bind your wound.”

His dark hair curled, sweat-damp, against his forehead. “It is but a scratch, lady.”

Lady
. He didn’t remember her, did not know the sound of her voice, though his haunted her dreams so that it seemed they had only just parted. The sting of tears infuriated her, and she blinked them away. “Don’t be a fool. There is an arrow sticking out of your shoulder. That is more than a scratch.”

She lifted the huge shears from the chest and approached the bed, careful not to meet his eyes or show him her face more than she would have to. “Lift your arm.” When he hesitated, she snapped, “Do you value your fine shirt more than your life?”

“I only feared you might cut the whole arm off, to spite me,” he said, dutifully complying with her order. “I do recognize you, Johanna.”

It took only that. The way he said her name, the same after all these years, though now tinged with sorrow, as if he ached with regret, as well, and she could no longer bear her anger. She slid the bottom blade of the unwieldy scissors into his shirt sleeve, nicking his skin and turning the fabric crimson with a drop of his blood. The temptation to spill more of it, to cut him, to beat him, to hurt him until he felt the weight of those miserable fifteen years, was almost too great. She tore, more than cut, the sleeve free, and tossed the shears aside.

“You look well,” he continued, as if he had not noticed her rough handling of him, as if he could talk the truth away.

“This is no drawing room,” she snapped, laying the torn sleeve aside to view his wound. The arrow had entered deeply, and dried blood had turned his skin into a mass of glittering brown flakes that fell away beneath her fingertips. There was more muscle there than before, when he’d had the skinny arms of a boy. She pulled her hand back. “And I will not forget what passed between us to comfort you.”

“I would never ask you to.” He hissed when her hand fell on the shaft of the arrow. “Careful. It met the bone. I could tell by the sound.”

She feared he was right, and then wondered at that fear. It mattered not to her if he were maimed for life. “Bone or no, it must come out.”

Going to the door, she called for Wilhelm. His footsteps sounded on the stair before his voice. With no fine tapestries on the walls or carpets on the floor, sound travelled well. “You called, Johanna?” he asked at the top of the stair, and when he entered she glared at him. He had known that she would try to conceal her identity from Philipe, and he had planned to spoil it.

“We need to pull out the arrow.” She wrapped a strip of linen bandaging tight around his arm and knotted it. “You’ll have to hold him.”

“That won’t be necessary.” Philipe took a deep breath and fixed his stare at the burned-out canopy above him. “When you’re ready.”

Johanna rolled her eyes at Wilhelm, but he did not move. How like men, to work together in their asinine delusions. She gripped the fletched end and pulled, twisting.

The sound Philipe made was not unlike the sound of a pig being butchered. He rose up from the bed with the arrow and grabbed her hand.

It was like being burned all over again. That simple contact awoke long dead memories, the giddy feeling of his hand in hers all those summers ago. A thousand promises of love, none of which had proved worth the breath she’d wasted repeating them, tortured her. She let go of the arrow and let his wounded arm flop back to the bed. He swore, and she leaned over him, her veil scraping his chest.

“Take this off, damn you!” Philipe’s cry was tinged with pain and frustration, masking the intent of his words for one crucial heartbeat. Before she could comprehend his action, he gripped the veil and tugged it from her head.

Shrieking, shameful tears stinging her eyes, she stepped back, covering her face with both hands. She heard the thud of fist against flesh, and raced to Wilhelm’s side to stay his arm before he could strike Philipe again. Despite what the spoiled prince had done to her, Johanna did not wish to see Wilhelm beat a wounded man. “Brother, no! What would father say?”

Panting, Wilhelm stepped back. With trembling fingers, Johanna reached down to pluck her veil from Philipe’s chest. She saw his look of disgust. She did not meet his eyes. She knew what he had seen. A head with naught but a few, scraggly jet strands sprouting to lay against skin melted like the wax of a candle. Eyes that did not completely close, even when she slept, for the lids had burned away. The slits of nostrils where her nose had once been. The cheek and lips that had not been touched by the fire, in some cruel jest that reminded her daily of the beauty she’d once possessed.

She no longer needed beauty, and she did not need pity from the man who’d so carelessly abandoned her.
Let him see
, she thought.
Let him see the wife he could have had. If there is any conscience in him, let it be salved by being saved from a fate worse than death.

Though her own burden was eased by her vicious thoughts, she replaced her veil. He did not deserve to see. He did not deserve to rest easy.

“Brother, hold his arm.” She turned away from the bed, returning to Nurse’s chest of medicine. At the bottom, beneath the surgeon’s implements Nurse had learned to use so efficiently all those years ago, she found the thick braid of leather. She brought it to the bed and placed it against Philipe’s lips. “Bite down on this. It will give you some comfort.”

“I doubt that, lady.” Blood trickled from where Wilhelm had burst Philipe’s lip with a single hard blow. She would not tend to that wound.

“Do not doubt, for I can tell you that it does bring comfort.” She met his eyes through the sheer fabric of her veil. “For I did the same when my Nurse had to scrub my cooked flesh raw, to clean it and speed healing. I learned many tricks during those long, vile hours, to lessen pain.”

“I bow to your superior experience,” he said, and the edge of the spoiled prince was there, not so far beneath the surface.

She pushed the cord into his mouth, and he gagged and worked it forward with his tongue. She nodded to Wilhelm, who pinned the patient’s arm. With a knee on the mattress, Johanna gripped the arrow and pulled with all her might. It budged, but only barely, and Philipe screamed around the leather cord. Bracing herself more solidly, Johanna pulled, using Philipe’s long, muffled wail as strength she could draw upon. The arrow slid loose with a sucking sound. Blood welled at the wound, but it did not spray.

Philipe’s cry had stopped, and she’d not noticed until she looked up to see him, sweat streaming down his unconscious face. Her stomach turned over, and she wiped her bloody hands on his ruined shirt. “Leave the tourniquet, stanch the bleeding. If it does not stop, come for me.”

“Where are you going?” Wilhelm asked, panicked, as she pressed a square of linen into his hands and guided them to the wound.

“I need a moment.” She rose and stepped over the arrow that now lay harmlessly on the ground. She was certain she would vomit, and the smell from the stewpot didn’t help to calm her stomach. She fled to the balcony and down the stairs, the winter air opening her lungs.

At the bottom, she clung to the splintered railing and doubled over, willing herself to heave up and have done with it. But nothing came, and she instead sat down on the wet stair, a sense of disappointment assailing her. It would have been so cleansing and dramatic to run down from the tower and vomit, before collapsing in the snow. Then Wilhelm would fear for her, as he always feared for her, and he would feel the terrible press of great responsibility on his shoulders.

She should not enjoy such things, but he’d brought
Philipe
. He’d brought the bastard into their home, into an arrangement that already struggled to survive. Wilhelm had wanted to go to court, to plead with Albart for protection. It had been Johanna’s word that had undone those plans. She hadn’t had the courage to show her beastly face among the fine ladies at the palace. Most of all, she hadn’t wanted to see Philipe.

It had been a selfish choice, subjecting them both to a life of austere poverty and dangerous exposure in their fallen down castle. Where they had once lived as nobles, now they lived as slaves to the demands for food, shelter, comfort, safety. The time would come when it would not be just an injured prince at their doorstep, and Wilhelm, for all his devotion, would not be able to hold Hazelhurn by himself, forever. It took only the might of one greedy lord, seeking to hold the fearsome fortress for his own, and they would both be dead.

All because she had been unwilling to reveal the extent of her injuries before a palace full of women who’d been openly delighted when the future princess had been cast aside because of her deformation.

So many years, and she’d faced Philipe in the end, anyway. She tried to think of it as a sign, but she didn’t believe in such things anymore. No sign had appeared to warn them of the fire that had destroyed their family. No sign had raised her hope when her fiancé had rescinded his love upon learning that she was no longer the beauty of his dreams. She could not believe there was a guiding force making meaningful changes to their lives, not after she’d seen the faces of people she’d loved turned black and bloody by the flames.

Upstairs, the man who could have honored his agreement, who could have taken her under his protection, laid waiting for her to protect him. Father would have admonished her for hesitating to help a person in need.

Wilhelm could not understand. Though he had been burned, he had not been cursed by the flames as she had. Some days, she thought she might have preferred to die, as her father and brother had.

No, not as they had
. Peacefully, with less pain. Some had never woken when the smoke had filled the east tower. Her father’s elite black guard had perished in their beds, too exhausted from the day’s celebratory tournament to notice that the air had filled with choking blackness. A celebratory tourney. It seemed ridiculous, that they had celebrated with such spectacle a union that had never been meant to be. Those men that had woken, woke too late to escape the flames. They’d perished, then been cremated, in the stone oven of the tower. Johanna did not like to look upon that tower. The bones of some men remained there. In the days following the fire, every resource had been dedicated to survival. Clearing away the quiet dead had not been a priority.

She remembered her father’s wordless screaming in those last, long days. She had not seen him, but the stories were horrific. Her brother had died in the same room that she now slept in; Wilhelm bedded down on the very cot. Ever since the fire, their lives had been consumed by death.

Now, the man who’d been the cause of it, the man who’d promised his love and then had cruelly taken it back when she was no longer the pretty bauble he’d desired, wanted them to save him from that death. It would have been comical, if she’d been watching it in a play.

“Sister?” Wilhelm’s voice called after her. “Sister, the bleeding has not stopped.”

Climbing to her feet, she ran through Nurse’s instructions for puncture wounds.
It should not bleed too frightfully, but if it does, bind it. If it persists, seal it with heated iron, so that the good humors will not wash away with the bad.
“Heat the fire poker,” she called ahead of her. It seemed almost fitting that she should now burn Philipe, when he’d scarred her in a way even the fire hadn’t managed.

She would endeavor not to enjoy it.

Chapter Three

The morning dawned cold and bright, and Philipe blinked against the sunlight that streamed through the uncovered window. The freezing air invaded the feeble warmth of the tower room, and he pulled the blankets to his chin. Sometimes upon waking a strange bed, it took him a moment to remember where he’d rested his head the night before, and who might be sleeping beside him. Not this morning. The pain in his shoulder reminded him before he’d opened his eyes. He was reminded, too, that the black, shrouded figure pouring a piss pot out the window was not a mere servant.

When last he’d seen the Lady Johanna, she had cried and clung to him, asking for promises of love to appease her girlish fascination. He’d been eager enough to give them, unaware then that the feelings of others were not the same as his own. Had Johanna spurned him all those years ago, he would not have been as affected as she had been by his careless casting aside. He would have raged, and used it as an excuse to drink too much wine. He would have had every serving girl in the castle up against a wall, and in a week’s time, when the game of wounded lover grew tiresome, he would have abandoned it.