Prisoner of the Flames (Leisure Historical Romance) (18 page)

Once inside the smokehouse, he hurried Violette below to the hidden chamber, where he dared risk examining her by candlelight, and set her down on the pallet. His hands were no more use to him than two blunt clubs as he struggled with
the flint, and it seemed an eternity before he managed to light the candle, still fastened to the floor with beeswax where they’d left it when they set out on their journey. Taking it up and holding it closer, his breath caught in a gasp, and his scalp drew back taut. She was burning with fever, her crimson face running with sweat and covered with puffy red blotches.

He tore off her headdress and opened the neck of her robe, spreading it wide. He groaned again at sight of the same red welts spread over her throat and shoulders, one of which had bloomed black, oozing puss.

He searched the pocket of his robe for the lozenge he’d held in reserve, praising God when he found it there after all they’d been through, and forced it between her parted lips.

“Oh, Christ! You have to help me here!” he pleaded, rocking her frantically in his arms. He lifted her closer and shook her, calling her name again and again, in a vain attempt to rouse her, and something rolled from the shallow pocket of her robe with the jostling, something round. He recognized it at once, the lozenge he had given her in the forest after they left the nunnery. It was scarcely altered.

“You foolish, foolish child!” he groaned. “What have you
done?”

T
ime meant nothing to Robert then, shut up in the bowels of
the castle ruins. Once he tethered and tended the horse in much the same place that he had Montaigne’s bay on his first visit there, he sat wide-eyed beside Violette through the night, sponging her face with cool water from one of the skins he’d filled by the sparkling forest stream on their way to the coast. It was nearly gone now, since they had shared some with the gelding along the way. He knew that soon he would have to find a new source, and as the distant sound of bird music seeped through the dovetailed crevices, he left Violette and hurried outside with the water skins, anxious to have it accomplished while darkness still covered his movements.

He vaguely recalled having sighted the glint of a stream along the edge of the forest that bearded the foot of the knoll along the southern slope. Deciding that the spot would make a better place to hide the horse as well, since it was deeper into the weald, he quickly led the animal there, and tethered him beside the stream.

The water was sweet and icy-cool, running musically over watercress and pure white stones, sparkling in the predawn haze that would soon give way to a clear morning. He filled the skins, and ducked his head in the shallow flux in an attempt to rid himself of the weariness that had sapped his strength. The forest was thick and wild there, and content that it was unlikely anyone would stumble on the horse concealed in such a secluded place, he took up the water skins, and started back toward the ruins. As he lumbered up
the hill, however, his new relief evaporated at sight of a shadow moving slowly through the drifting mist amid the crumbling castle walls—a horse and rider, black in silhouette against the slowly lightening sky.

Robert dropped down, flattening himself to the breast of the knoll, and watched, his breath suspended, while the rider swung himself down. It was still too dark to define the shape of the intruder, and he drew his sword and slithered closer, crawling on his belly through the tall grass spears, cold and wet with the autumn dew.

Close proximity did little to affect a clearer perspective, but now the horse’s lusty snorting came clear, and he felt the tremor of the animal’s heavy hoofs pawing the ground beneath him. Choosing his moment, the Scot surged to his full height without a sound and flattened himself against the angled smokehouse wall, the sword ready at his side. When the shadow moved alongside, he lunged and drove the man behind it to the ground, the sword blade at his throat.

“Hold there!” the man’s winded voice cried, misshapen for the pressure of the sword flattening his Adam’s apple.

Distorted though it was, there was something familiar in the sound, and Robert took a closer look at the man he’d pinned there.

“Doctor Nostradamus?”
he breathed.

“Yes, my fine young ram,” the healer choked. “Well met, or nearly, eh?”

“Good God, forgive me!” Robert groaned. “I had no idea it was you, Doctor. Have I hurt you, sir?”

“If you will haul that hulking carcass off me, I will try to rise and tell you,” the healer said through a guttural chuckle.

Robert jumped to his feet and helped the healer up alongside him, holding his breath while the plump old man slapped the dirt from his Lyons velvet robe and snatched up his four-cornered hat, which had sailed a few yards off.

“I couldn’t see you clearly,” Robert told him. “You could have been a soldier—anyone in this deceiving predawn ink. I beg you, forgive me, sir. I am the prince of blunders.”

“The king of them, if we would be accurate, but take ease, young lord. Nothing is broken as far as I can tell, save poise and bearing. It is good to see that you have come back safely. I have ventured here each morning at this hour for two days now in the hopes that I’d come upon you.”

“You were expecting me?” Robert blurted. “Then that was you by the yews last night. Why didn’t you make your presence known?”

The healer frowned. “If you saw someone by the forest, it was not me,” he said.

“I thought I did,” Robert mused, “but then, in the blink of an eye, the image vanished. It must have been my imagination. Violette thought she heard something at the château, and I have been overly cautious. That is probably what prompted it. But you were expecting me. How?”

“I knew you would return once you learned of your uncle’s arrest,” the healer explained. “With Montaigne gone south to the coast, this seemed your logical alternative. How fares the girl? The convent did not keep her, then?”

“She is with me still, and she has come down with plague, I think. I was praying that I could find you…praying that you hadn’t left the city.”

“Well, I am found. Take me to her. Has she had the remedy I gave you?”

“I thought she had,” said Robert, leading him below, “but last night when I brought her here, the dose fell from her pocket scarcely touched.”

“Hmmm, that is not good.”

“We came upon plague twice along the journey. After the first encounter, I gave her one of the lozenges at once, but she complained that her stomach rejected the thing. Then at the convent, they would not admit us. The whole nunnery
was down with the disease, save a handful. I reserved two patties for ourselves, and gave what remained to the sister we spoke with. I had Violette take one at once, of course, but I believe that was the one I found. Who is to say that the first was not discarded in the same manner?”

“But you did dose her last night?” the healer queried.

“Yes. She was in no condition to refuse it, but was it in time?”

“We shall see,” Nostradamus replied, descending the stairs.

Below, Violette lay as Robert had left her, and the healer quickly scrutinized the scalding blotched skin and restless delirium.

“She comes to now and then, but makes no coherent sounds,” Robert told him. “The fever rages. Can naught else be done? Can you not bleed her…or—”

“I do not hold with bloodletting,” Nostradamus interrupted. “It is of no use with plague whatsoever, and only adds to the victim’s discomfort. Phlebotomy is a ghoulish practice, to begin with, a ploy of the incompetent, and a barbaric hoax. I’ve seldom seen it prove effective in any respect, unless you consider draining the mad sufficiently enough to make them weak and docile ‘effective.’ I do not.”

“What then? There has to be a nostrum…some herbal draught, perhaps?”

Nostradamus shook his head. “No medicinal cordial I have come upon yet has ever affected a cure for plague. That is why the death toll is so great in these cases.”

Robert’s heart leapt. “You aren’t saying…?” he murmured.

“No, not yet at least,” the healer said. “It seems a mild case, so far as I can tell. It has not just come on her, either. Like as not, she came down with it upon your first encounter.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“Do you see this, here?” the healer said, exposing the ugly, blackened canker on the side of her throat to his view.
“This is too far advanced for the disease to have been recent. The blackness is a good sign, believe it or not. It tells that her body is fighting back.”

“She never complained,” Robert murmured. “Only once did she confess that she was weary, and that was shortly before she fell. If only she’d taken that remedy…”

“Take ease, young ram. I have more lozenges, for you as well. This last that you gave her was your own, wasn’t it?” He waved the question away with a hand gesture after his fashion. “Nevermind. We will use what I have, and wait.” He laughed. “Don’t look so wary. I have had astounding success with my confections in past epidemics. You might inquire of the good people of Ax, who have granted me a substantial life pension for the accomplishments of my curious pastilles there.” He took one from the pouch he wore about his waist and extended it in his wrinkled palm. “You look at this here, and you see a withered mass of bark and leaf that resembles a turd and tastes not much better. I look at the self-same thing, and I see life. See with your spirit, Robert Mack, and it wouldn’t hurt to pray. No remedy will work else God Himself prescribes it, and you
take
it.”

“You are, indeed, a strange fellow,” Robert said, thinking out loud.

“Many tell me so,” the healer said, forcing the lozenge through Violette’s blistered lips. He laughed again. “Many say that my cures and prophesying are accomplished by witchcraft and sorcery. Some even go so far as to suggest that those whose lives I do save are doomed to pay the penalty in everlasting hellfire.”

“Is that true?”

“That you even ask tells me I waste my breath,” the healer growled, arms akimbo.

“I am sorry,” Robert murmured.

“You should be. And look at you! You are a fine specimen.
I’ve seen healthier-looking cadavers in the surgery. How is that wound?”

“Well enough, I expect. I’ve had no time to trouble over it.”

“Slip down that robe, and let me see,” the healer charged. “And when was your last dose of my controversial remedy, eh?”

“I don’t remember—two—three days ago.”

“Hmmm, I thought as much. Well, we’ll have you down here next. Have this,” he ordered, thrusting a lozenge toward him. Robert took it without protest, and let him probe the wound. “Ummm,” the healer grunted. “Despite your negligence, it mends well enough, so it seems.”

“Nevermind me. What of her?”

The healer cocked his head and studied him. “She…matters to you, then?” he said at last.

“Well, of course she matters to me!”

“That is not exactly what I’ve asked.”

Robert sputtered digesting that, but not for long. Behind, Violette stirred, and he vaulted to her side. She had begun to thrash about and moan, and he gathered her into his arms and sponged the sweat from her hot face with the cool water he’d brought from the stream.

“My lord,” she cried, groping the air. “My lord, where are you?”

“Shhh, child,” he soothed, brushing the tangled honey-brown hair back from her hot face. “I am right here beside you.”

“My lord—
my lord!
Am I not allowed to call you by your given name as you do me? I knew it once, I think…I cannot remember,” she moaned through a rattle that riddled him with cold chills. He had heard such before in the dying.

“You may call me Robert, lass, if it pleases you,” he murmured, “—
anything
, lass, just do not die.”

She didn’t answer. The glazed, vacant eyes rolled back in
her head behind closed lids, and she drifted off again into senseless babbling.

“She is delirious,” Nostradamus said, troubling his whiskers.

“No, she was coherent,” Robert insisted.

The healer wagged his head. “Her subconscious speaks, young ram,” he said. “No rational voice is in her now. She thrashes. She will break the canker open, and that will spread the poison. She will have to be tethered.”

“You would restrain her?” Robert breathed, incredulous.

“You must sleep sometime,” the healer pointed out.

“You mean to tie her down?”

Nostradamus nodded. “How else are we to prevent her doing herself harm? It is a common practice. She will come to no harm from tethers.”

“But…she cannot bear restraints. She will be terrified.”

“She will not even know,” said the healer. “Those blotches there, on her face, her arms, and doubtless on the rest of her…if she were to scratch the surface they would leave ghastly scars behind. Scars may be in any case, but if we can prevent them…”

“You mean to say that she could be…disfigured?”

“It is a possibility.”

“Oh, God, that foolish, foolish child!” he groaned.

“The prospect overwhelms you? Could that be because of your own disfiguration?” the healer said.

“She is so beautiful. I never thought about the possibility of…scars.”

“Would you love her any the less?”

“Love her?”

The healer smiled. “That comes as a surprise to you, does it?” he chided.

“Are you mad?”

“No. Are you
blind?”
the healer parried.

“I have no right to love her, or anyone,” Robert said flatly.

“And why is that?”

“Now
who is blind?”

Nostradamus smiled. “She there in your arms will never have her sight. Let us pray that you gain yours while there is still time left for it to be of use to you.”

“I am in no humor for your cryptic riddles, sir,” Robert warned, easing Violette back against the pallet. “I have this nightmare with Uncle Aengus yet before me. I have no time to spare for solving riddles.”

“Oh, so you would storm the Bastille single-handedly then, would you?”

“You mock me!”

“I marvel.”

“I would attempt to liberate him, yes,” said Robert. “Why bandy words. You’ve said as much.”