Healer (7 page)

Chapter Five

Brenna surfaced from sleep on the wide pallet next to her patient. He was murmuring again … not that she could make out his words. A glance at the hearth told her that Faol had gone out, but as to whether it was night or day, she wasn’t certain. She’d lost all sense of time and routine since bringing the stranger to her cave. Thankfully she’d been diligent in preparing for the long dark of winter and was well supplied with food, fuel for the fire, and medicinal herbs.

But the stranger wasn’t healing. Not as he should. His wounds ran deeper than the flesh, challenging her expertise, while his cries and murmurings aroused compassion. If only she could relieve his nightmares, give him a reason to want to live.

And so she doted on him—singing, praying, reciting the Scriptures she’d been memorizing since she was old enough to speak. The Psalms were her favorites. In them she hoped he would hear the despair of God’s beloved turn to praise again and again. The words would remind him and her of the joy of God’s love, felt even in the darkest of times.

As she repeated verse after verse, she watched closely for the bat of an eyelash, a movement of his arm or lips—any sign of response. But fever toyed with her, giving her hope one moment as it broke and returning to dash it the next. Her initial discomfort at ministering to the muscled planes of his body and that most male of his anatomy subsided with necessity.

As a precaution she introduced a concoction of barrenwort and like herbs as an essential part of the stranger’s broth for their dulling effect on a man’s baser nature. Granted, he was weak and harmless. For now. But until he was well enough to leave and as long as she shared the same pallet, she would continue that precaution.

During her chores Brenna found herself talking to the man as she did to Faol. She expected no answer but enjoyed the companionship she’d missed since Ealga’s passing. As though he might be interested, she explained about the herbs and broths she made for him, all save the barrenwort, and spoke to him encouragingly about the healing of his wounds.

“You must recover, Adam.” The name seemed to suit him, given he was her first male patient and all but naked except for a cloth wrap about his middle. “The Father has a destiny for you,” she’d insisted, quoting Jeremiah.
“For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the L
ORD
, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end.”

And what was that destiny? Brenna propped herself up on one elbow to study his sleeping face. Of course he’d leave. No one would voluntarily isolate himself as her circumstance demanded. Perhaps he’d ride off to fight with Arthur.

“Will you join our young Dux Bellorum and hold back the northern Picts from taking our beloved Manau? Or fight the Saxons to the south and east of us?”

Though this Arthur was the first to bear the title
and
the given name, his enemies were more than the nameless Romano-British commander general who held off the initial Saxon onslaughts further south when her parents were but babes. For safety’s sake, it had been forbidden by law back then to address great personages by their given names—a deed punishable by death. But the previous Arthurs were also of the royal Davidic and priestly Arimathean bloodlines preserved by the church.

What if Adam were of like parentage? Brenna fingered the gold ring on his finger, looking for a symbol and finding naught but exquisite knotwork engraved upon it.

“Is your name recorded with those of the former Pendragons on the Sacred Isle, privy only to the church?” Brenna reached out and stroked his bristled jaw, giving rein to her imagination. “Have you blood royal roots here—a Pictish grandmother and a Scottish grandfather—like Arthur?”

While Arthur was the hope of Manau, the people called his father, Aedan,
uther
, terrible, for abandoning them to the enmity of the Northern Picts and Saxons in order to succeed his father, Gabran, to the grander Dalraida throne in the West. Even worse, Aedan married a Romano-British queen instead of a royal from the Gododdin lineage. It was at the blessing of the church, but poorly received in Manau, nonetheless. “Faith,
you
could already be married in that mire of matches … or worse, married in alliance to the O’Byrnes.” Brenna’s brow furrowed as she eyed the precious ring on his hand. “Regardless, you’ll be going. Of that I’m sure.”

A dread rooted in her chest, paining her already at the idea of being left alone once more. Granted, her companion hadn’t replied to the conversations she’d carried on with him, but he’d been there and taken the edge off her loneliness.

Mathair Ealga said this was her worst fault: her reluctance to let an animal go once she’d nurtured it to renewed health. Of all her rescues, only Faol had come back. The white wolf went off at times to hunt and, no doubt, mate, but he always returned.

“He’ll take care of ye, child, until he brings ye one to take his place.”

Brenna pondered her nurse’s strange prediction as she rose to build the fire for tea. Stirring the banked coals, she thought back to the day Faol had singled out the stranger to protect, even at the risk of the wolf’s life. Suddenly she caught her breath, glancing sharply at the sleeping figure lying on the nearby pallet.

Faith, had Ealga meant Faol would bring her a
man
instead of another pup?

Nay! She dismissed the idea, focusing on adding kindling to the glowing red coals. What wishful thinking that was. The kind that could only lead to disappointment.

Perhaps a soak in the hot spring would wash away such nonsense from her addled brain. That’s exactly what she needed. And she would see to it as soon as Faol returned from his wandering to keep an eye on the patient. The wolf would raise an alarm if Adam should gain consciousness or move about so as to hurt himself. In the meantime, the man needed to be fed.

Ronan O’Bryne swam through a fog-like world of imaginings as thick as a bog mist. Some were horrifying, and others made him wish he could remain there forever. He’d seen angels and demons, felt unbearable heat and brittle cold. Voices damned him to the depths of Hades on the one side and pulled him back on the other with heavenly song. There’d been pain; then he flew above it. Whatever came at him, he surrendered to it. He was tired of fighting. Ronan craved peace, yet it was the one thing that would not come.

His eyelids felt laden with lead rather than flesh as he forced them open. Above him a stone ceiling swirled slowly, blurring bunches of herbs and baskets strung on a rope across part of it. Their earthy scent mingled with the must of damp stone. It was not unpleasant. Just strange. Was he in a cave or a tomb? The dancing shadows of the herbs drew his attention across the ceiling and down to where a fire blazed in a cutout of rock to one side of the enclosure. The wall above it was blackened with soot from the rising smoke. A small pot hung from an iron trammel over the fire bed, but it was the large beast lying next to the blaze that arrested his breath.

The white wolf! So it
had
been real. Somewhere in his memory he recalled a giant of a wolf lying beside him. But as to the circumstances, he was at a loss.

As if sensing Ronan’s consciousness, the animal raised its head and looked at him with shining eyes alight from the fire’s glow. Unable to hold it longer, Ronan allowed his breath to escape slowly and closed his eyes again. He tried to make sense of what he’d seen, or thought he’d seen. So if the wolf was real, was the dark-haired angel with the heavenly voice also?

God’s mercy, she’d drawn him to her from alternating bouts of utter blackness and relentless fires, battling for him with prayers and words of Scripture. There’d been something about her so familiar and inviting that he’d wanted to reach for her, touch her, cling to the promise of words he’d rejected in the past.

A white wolf. A raven-haired beauty. Hadn’t Joanna of Gowrys been such a woman? Fragments of his memory circled in his brain until they finally connected. Joanna’s image was indelibly etched in Ronan’s mind. He searched through the fog until his angel materialized. The same dark hair and ivory skin. Such compassion when she looked at him.

A shiver razed his spine. Could the rumors of the Gowrys changeling be true? Was he in her lair?

Ronan cracked open one eye enough to see that the white wolf had lowered its head again. He didn’t believe in such superstitious nonsense. Nonetheless, images began to drift into his consciousness like floating leaves in a fall breeze. One moment she sang to him like a sweet siren bent on drawing him from the pits of Hades. The next, there was the wolf licking his face, as though tasting a prospective meal.

Whatever the nature of his caregiver, he was in no position to do anything about it. Sorting delirium from reality would have to wait.

Just as Ronan began to drift away into oblivion, he sensed, rather than saw, the animal stir. With great effort he peeked in time to see the angel from his fevered recollections enter the cell. Her dark hair was wet and spread like a tangled shroud over her shoulders and the coarse, shapeless shift she wore.

“So it’s not boiled, has it?” she said to the wolf as she rubbed both its ears with her hands. The affection reduced the huge animal to a tail-wagging pup that rolled over and exposed its belly for further attention. “And how is our patient?”

Ronan closed his eyes as she turned to look at him. Relief spread through him. He had not lost his mind. The woman and wolf were not one and the same.

“He didn’t take much broth this morning. Once my hair is dry, I’ll try to get him to eat again.”

But she
was
real, Ronan realized with a pang of alarm. He cracked his gaze at her again. She was the very image of the woman he’d seen drive a dagger into her breast and curse his father forever. She could be none other than the long-lost daughter of Gowrys.

Humming to herself, the young woman sat down on a stool by the hearth and began to work a comb through her wet tresses, oblivious to his scrutiny. The motion twisted the loose shift about feminine curves that left no doubt that she was of age—and ripe enough to take a man’s breath away had his aching chest not been so stingy with it. That Ronan well recognized her voice as his angel’s conflicted with what he knew to be true. He was at the mercy of his sworn enemy.

A defensive rush shot through him. He tried lifting his head, but for all his effort, it might have been the cornerstone of Glenarden’s hall. Truly God, if there was one, had a wicked sense of humor….

Ronan must have drifted off, for when he next was aware, the scent of food taunted his eyelids open. At a crude table near the hearth, the woman grimaced over a bowl in which she crushed something with a stone pestle. Her hair, now confined in a long black braid, swung as she worked.

“I’m hoping I can get some of this boiled venison into you, Adam. That is, if I can crush it fine enough,” she said.

Ronan moved his eyes only, glancing about the stone cell. But the wolf was not there. So who was Adam?

“You must get stronger, or you’ll never heal.” She stopped and perused a shelf lined with jars and vials. “The drawing herbs and fever brews have done well by you, but it’s time we strengthen the blood and muscles, lest they wane away.” Her voice faded to a murmur as she read off the names of the medicines capped with linen and wax. “And we can’t have that fine body waste away, now, can we?” she said, peeling back the cloth cap of one jar and measuring a bit of its content. She sprinkled it into the bowl and began grinding again.