Faerie (13 page)

Leonie gritted her teeth, forcing calm on herself, for the healing needed all her concentrated energy to work. She nestled herself into a safe position against the tree trunk, worked her hose down her leg to bare her skin, and cupped her palm over the wound. Her eyes closed, she focused every part of her being to the healing.

She could feel—

Nothing. Only the jabbing pain. The blood seeped onto her hand.

Haps a little less. Leonie squeezed her eyes closed again, furrowing her brow. Her palm pressed hard, forcing all her energy into the wound. She felt the familiar weakening. The pain seemed to lessen. Then it came back. Harder, she focused, forcing in the energy.

She frowned. It was not working.

It was not possible. Her healing energy never failed. Since she was a very young child, she had been able to close wounds. It had to work. But she could barely draw breath, and grew so weak she feared she might fall from the tree.

She tried her fingers on the gash again.

It still bled. What was wrong?

The only thing to do was bind the gash with her stocking.

The boar still roamed below. Every time she moved, it came back to the tree, grunting its ferocious threats. She could barely make out the boar’s head and the pale eyes glaring malevolently up at her. She would never get out of this tree unless she killed it.

The boar discovered her bow, dangling from the short, broken branch where she had left it. The beast lunged as if it meant to knock it down to trample it or chew it to shreds. If it reached just a handspan higher, it would succeed. She had to get to it first.

Balancing on the injured foot despite the pain, she shifted down one limb, aware that the boar had noticed her movement. She reached as far as she could, but the oak’s thick trunk was in the way. One more limb down and she would be within reach, but that limb slanted downward and her weight would bring it even closer to the ground, closer to the boar’s savage tusks.

She’d have no chance at all if the boar got its brutal teeth on her bow.

Taking a breath to calm her racing pulse, she tucked the skirt of her kirtle into her waist cord, and she eased out onto the thick, low-hanging branch toward the bow. The boar lunged and grunted. She supposed it might be comical to watch an enormous, heavy animal trying to rear up on its hind legs, but from her viewpoint it was not particularly funny. When she realized she could feel its hot breath touching her leg, she almost screamed, jerking her leg back to the top of the branch, which was beginning to sag from her weight.

The bow was easy enough to grab. She inched along until the quiver’s leather strap finally touched her fingers.

With a furious screech, the boar leaped. Leonie yelped and shied backward, all but losing her hold as she grabbed a smaller branch for balance. The boar was smarter than she thought. It meant to frighten her into just such a mistake.

Well, she wasn’t going to cooperate. If it hadn’t reached her so far, then it probably couldn’t. She slipped both bow and quiver over her shoulder and backed up the sloping branch. Backing up was harder. Her foot slipped. Terror helped her get it back up before the boar caught it.

At last she reached the crotch of the branch and pulled herself to standing by holding on to small branches. But the moment she got the bow strung, the boar, apparently bored, wandered away from the tree into darkness.

No matter. As soon as it came within sight again, she could shoot it. In fact, she probably could kill it, just listening to its noises as it rooted around nearby, but she didn’t want to waste arrows. And the last thing she wanted was to be stuck in a tree with a wounded boar somewhere in the area.

It hadn’t forgotten her. It soon returned and sniffed out her shoes where they dangled, too far away for Leonie to reach. She’d never get far without shoes. No more time to waste.

She aimed her arrow at the eyes and shot, guiding it with her silent song.

The arrow thudded. The boar kept on rooting and grunting. Not even a squeal. She’d missed!

She shook so hard she almost dropped her bow. She never missed. With her ability to guide an arrow to its target, it was impossible!

But she had.

One piece at a time, Leonie forced her racing heart and shaking hands to calm. She could kill it with ordinary skills. All she had to do was wait for it to come close enough again, where even a child could not miss the shot. She just had to recapture its
interest. What it wanted was her leg, and she was not of a mood to give that up.

Or her blood. The scent of her blood seemed to enrage it. There was plenty of that on her stocking.

Bracing herself, Leonie untied the bandage she had made of the blood-soaked stocking. She squealed like an injured piglet while she waved the stocking almost within the boar’s reach. The boar turned and charged, banging head and hooves against the tree as if it could butt the entire oak to the ground.

She got a perfect view of its eyes and released her shot.

The boar’s scream split the sky. It wallowed on the ground, rolling its mighty head, and screamed once more. Then lay still.

Was it dead?

Haps she’d wait awhile before testing it.

She leaned back against the oak’s trunk, propped in the safety of its branches, to await the soon-coming dawn, still unwilling to let her legs dangle freely, too disturbed to sleep.

“If
’
tis meant for ye to find the Summer Land, ye start walking and keep on going.”

Now she knew why, despite walking all day into the wilderness, the way to the Summer Land had not come to her. She could not see in the dark, as the Faeriekind could, as she had been able to do all her life. She could not heal her own wounds, as she had always done. Her arrows would not go where she willed them. The awful truth descended on her with the crushing gloom of the dark night.

All about her that was Faerie—was lost.

“G
OOD MORNING, PRECIOUS
bride.”

Philippe!

Leonie jerked awake and grabbed a branch in time to keep from falling from her precarious perch. She glanced wildly about. He was alone, but she had no chance of getting past him. She was in a tree almost at the edge of a cliff, her injured leg burning with pain. And he held her shoes and bloody hose in one hand.

“You may come down now. The boar is slain.”

“Only one of them,” she grumbled. “I believe I prefer the fat one with the tusks.”

His dark eyes blazed with an anger that belied his pleasant tone. He held up his hand to her. “Shall I assist you, my treasure?”

She had no choice but to depart the tree, but she didn’t have to accept his help. “I can do it myself.”

She laddered down through the branches, wincing at the pain shooting up her leg with each step. As she jumped to the ground, red waves of pain swamped her mind.

He glowered, focusing on her foot. “Let me see it.”

Leonie backed up, but the oak tree was behind her, and the cliff altogether too close beyond that.

He dangled her shoes just out of her reach. “Sit down. Let me see it.”

She probably wouldn’t make it three steps if she tried to run. With a sigh, she sat, leaning her back against the oak.

Philippe knelt beside her and lifted her foot to examine it, turning it slightly. She winced. For the first time she saw how much damage had been done by the boar’s tusk. A wide, bloody gash ran diagonally along her ankle. She knew he meant to be gentle with his touch, but his finger trailing alongside the gash set it afire with pain.

“Do you have any water?”

She nodded toward her bundle that sat in the fork of the lowest branch, and he retrieved the waterskin. As he wiped the dampened stocking over the wound, she sucked in a breath to keep from crying out.

“Not too deep,” he said. “The muscle isn’t torn. But it could turn putrid. I’ll have to carry you down the hill.”

“I can walk.”

“No, you can’t. I don’t suppose you have a needle?”

She nodded again. A needle was an essential of life for her.

“Linen thread?”

“Only wool.”

“Wool won’t do.” He unsheathed his knife and raised her kirtle to reveal the linen chemise beneath it. He cut a narrow swath, pulled several long threads from the weave, then rolled the fibers together. Leonie didn’t have to be told to thread the needle with the newly made thread.

The first jab into her tender skin at the center of the gap made her jump, but she gritted her teeth so she wouldn’t do it again.

“I suppose you’ve never been stitched before.”

“Nay, but I can see you’re going to do it crooked.” She pushed him away and repositioned the torn flesh so it would line up better.

He frowned, but then he nodded and put the needle at the exact place she indicated. Slowly he pulled the wound together, knotted the stitch, and used his knife to cut it. Halfway up from there, he began another stitch, which she again corrected. He
didn’t really seem to have any notion of how much he stretched the skin on one side but let it sag on the other.

“If you sewed a seam like that, it would have an ugly pucker in it,” she said.

“And of course a lady would not want puckered flesh on her leg. Well, then, precious bride, would you care to point out the next stitch?”

She ignored the sneer and directed the rest of the stitches. But by the time seven stitches held the wound together, she was dizzy from the pain.

“You’re pale,” he said. “Lie down for a moment.”

“Nay.”

“Drink some water. Then lie down.”

She could hardly swallow the swig. But she rested against the tree as he laid out the bits of food from her pouch, until she thought she could eat.

While she picked at the cheese and bread, he walked over to the boar and removed the arrow from its head. “No sense in letting good meat go to waste,” he said. He skinned the beast’s haunch and carved a thick slab of meat.

He sat back and watched her, his brown eyes almost hooded by golden-brown-lashed lids. He seemed as detached as a man sitting in a hall drinking his ale with his knights, discussing politics and skirmishes. But his anger fairly radiated from him.

“You’ve never been in the wild at night, I’ll wager,” he said. “Else you would have never done such a foolish thing.”

She paused to sneer, then broke off another piece of the dry bread. She would have been just fine if her Faerie skills had not betrayed her.

“Luck was with you, that you even escaped,” he said. “I thought you were doomed when I heard your scream.”

Leonie bit her lip to close off her retort.

“And fortunate it was a boar. You could not have escaped a pack of wolves.”

She turned her head away. What was the point of his conversation?

“You could not have made it to Scotland alive. Even if you did, Rufus would consider you a traitor for giving your English lands to his enemy.”

“What does it matter? He has already given away my inheritance. Rufus cares nothing for me, to wed me to a man who would murder me.”

“Still the lie, precious bride?” His nostrils flared, and the harsh, gravelly tone returned to his voice. “Surely you realize I know better. But it makes no difference. I don’t know why you’ve done this to me, but it is done, and you are as bound to this marriage as I am. I have promised Rufus to bring you back, safe and unharmed, and marry you, or my life and honor are forfeit. While I might throw away my life, my honor I will never sacrifice. You will return with me.”

“And once you have won my inheritance, it will no longer matter what happens to me.”

“I don’t want your inheritance, but I have no choice. By law, it will be yours until you die, but a man must administer it. And Rufus has bound me by oath to you forever.”

“Once married, it will not matter. Ah, I can hear it now. ‘So sorry, Your Majesty, but she fell off the tower in a windstorm and broke her neck.’ Then Rufus will sigh piteously. ‘A shame about wives, how often they fall from towers.’ You do not fool me, Peregrine. It’s murder that’s in your heart, and you’ll be done with me soon enough.”

His jaw tightened. “Let us make an agreement, then. I will cease thinking of murdering you if you will cease vexing me.”

“Everything I do vexes you. If I breathe, I vex you, you bloodthirsty varlet.”

“Alas. But your murder will have to wait. You’re of more use alive. You’re needed at Bosewood, you see. They’re a rebellious lot in the north, Scots in their hearts and blood, and only English by virtue of a border. After your father died, two castellans also died suspiciously.”

“A pike through the heart is too obvious to be suspicious.”

“The question is whether it came from a Scot or a village man or even a Norman. Only one other Norman has had any success in Northumbria, that villain Robert de Mowbray. Who knows what interest he might have in Bosewood?”

“So Rufus uses you to spy on de Mowbray.”

“I’ll be the king’s eyes in the North, aye. Rufus hopes I can do as well with Bosewood as de Mowbray has done with Northumbria, but it’s more likely I will also meet a suspicious death. You, on the other hand, are your mother’s child, and from what I hear, much like her, who the people loved. They will follow you, Leonie, but without you, they will descend into the chaos of war and face slaughter. They need you.”