Burning Shadows (19 page)

She laughed a bit uncertainly, then leaned into his hands again. “If it weren’t so cold, this work we do would be easier.”

“If it were not so cold, we would have less work to do. The man with the sprained ankle we dressed this morning got his injury from skidding on the ice, and the mason dropped the block he was putting in place because his fingers were stiff, to say nothing of the coughs and fevers that are so prevalent. But we might have the results of a Hunnic attack to contend with, so …” He lifted her arm and put her hand on his shoulder. “Do not try to hold it: rest. Let me keep it in place.”

“Do you think that spring …” she began, but changed her mind—thinking seemed to be too much trouble after such a demanding day. As he had promised, her over-stimulated exhaustion began to give way to lassitude. She started to smile as he worked down from her shoulder to her fingers, turning the stress of fatigue into relaxation; at the same time an unfamiliar thrill awakened within her, one she dared not identify. “Where did you learn to do this?”

“In Egypt and Roma, for the most part,” he told her, starting on her other arm. “You are tightening your shoulders again.”

“Could you teach me?” she asked, paying no attention to his admonition. Her quick smile brought a glint to her quicksilver eyes; she added, “If you teach me, I can do the same for you.”

“Learn to give massages? Do you want to?” He sensed her enthusiasm was more than the impulse of the moment. “You will need practice to build up your strength, but if it is what you want, I will.” She attempted to swing around so she could stand up, but he would not move to let her do so. “I
do
want to learn,” she said eagerly. “I have no wish to be a goat-and-shepherd forever.”

“Then you shall learn, after you are rested. In the morning, if you and I are not needed elsewhere, we can begin with Isalind; she has need of such relief.” He worked her hands, loosening them with a gentle shake, finger by finger.

“Why?” The question was sharp with a feeling that confused her.

“Because it is the result of her having one leg that is a bit longer than the other, so that every step she takes reinforces the ache in her back,” he said.

“I have an ache in my back,” she said.

“I know, but yours will fade—hers will not; every step she takes will renew it.” He ducked his head. “I have an unguent for you to use, later, on your lower back. It will reduce the discomfort you may feel from all the hard work you have done today. You have a tightness of the hip that could mean stiff joints tomorrow.” Finally he released her arm.

She lay down again as he began on the backs of her thighs, his fingers seeking out the tenderest knots. The sharp ache his first touch evoked quickly gave way to languor. “You feel it all, don’t you? The places I’m most tense.”

“You will learn the trick yourself, in time. You will discover how the body reveals itself.” He had bent over her legs as he moved down below her knees and focused on her calves. “You have a bruise on the back of this leg,” he went on, tapping her left ankle just below the purple smudge. “Do you know how you got it?”

Thinking back over her day, she took a short while to decide that “It had to have been when they were moving the farrier back to the infirmary; the stretcher-bearers had swung a stool out of the way and it banged into me.” She twisted on the table so that she could see it. “Not as bad as some I’ve had.”

“That stool could be the cause,” he agreed, and took care not to squeeze that part of her leg.

“Yesterday I tripped on the enclosed channel from the spring to the lake; the snow covered it completely. I might have got a bruise then, as well.” In spite of her determination to keep from giving herself away, Nicoris heard evasion in her answer.

“It is possible,” he said, feeling her response to him intensify along with her attempts to disguise the cause of her heightened state.

To distract herself, she asked, “What do you make of this Antoninu Neves? Is he really what he says he is?” The man had arrived at the monastery the day before with a small company of mercenaries under his command, claiming to have come from the Roman garrison at Porolissum; they said they had been in the employ of a Gepid landholder at his estate since the city was sacked, but that their arrangement had soured: sent off on their own without pay, they had been given provisional shelter at the monastery until the spring thaw in exchange for their labor and scouting.

“He seems a reliable sort of man, and his soldiers will be most useful here. Better that they should guard this valley than turn brigands.”

“Do you think they would do that?—turn outlaw?”

“It has happened before,” he said, recalling the trade routes he had followed, which were infested with gangs of former soldiers, as well as remote tribes that stole as a matter of survival, and the cities where garrisons enforced the laws in ways that made up for the pay they often did not receive. “And those who come from the Legions’ traditions have the habit of fighting.”

She could think of nothing to add; her thoughts remained fidgety. “How much longer will it snow?”

“Probably another day, and then it will be clear for a time—at least it has happened that way in the past,” he said.

“Then some of the men will go out to hunt boar,” Nicoris remarked.

“If the snow is not too deep,” Sanctu-Germainios remarked, and added, “You will need thicker wraps on your feet under your calcea; you have a blister forming on your heel.”

“I’ll be careful,” she said, her concentration disrupted by his touch; she could feel that his hands were cool, but where he put them, her skin seemed hot. A short while later he asked her to turn over.

“You mean you’re going to do more?” she exclaimed.

“If you like. If you would rather I not, then I will stop. There is hot water in the tub behind the confession-cell. You can wash away the soil of the day before you sleep. I have put a night-wrap next to the towel for you.”

Nonplussed, she could think of nothing to say. She wriggled onto her back, taking the time to look up at him as she wrestled with her clothes, unaccountably self-conscious. “What more will you do?”

“Your feet, your face, and perhaps your shoulders,” he said; he was aware of her confusion and sought to put her at ease. “If you are too tired to continue, I will leave you to sleep.”

“No,” she protested, repeating more calmly, “no. This is helpful.”

“As you wish,” he said, realigning the cotton blanket for her. “This will not take long, I think. You will want to sleep shortly.”

“Oh,” she said, between disappointment and relief. As he touched her foot, she quivered.

“Are you ticklish?” he asked, knowing the answer.

“No. It must be that the cold is fading and the heat prickles,” she said.

He said nothing in response to this as he started working on her foot, flexing it gently before stroking the sole with his thumbs, following the long tendons from toes to heel, aware that everything he did was no longer wholly relaxing for Nicoris; her pulse was getting faster, and her breathing was deepening. So long as she did not recognize her own fledgling arousal, he would continue; once she realized what was happening within her, he would cease his malacissation, it being no longer effective. He watched her stretch, her back arched, as he moved to her other foot. “I think, when I’m done with this”—he tweaked her big toe—“that you may want to go off to your bed.” It was in another alcove on the far side of the nave, less than half the size of this one, with its own small bed and fireplace, shutters over the tall, slitted windows, and a heavy wooden door to ensure her privacy.

Her yawn had a sigh in it. “You’re right. I should … wash and get to sleep.” That would get her away from his compelling presence so that she could regain her self-possession and bring her mind into order again.

“Very wise. The nights may be long, but you will need every hour of this one, or you will be tired still in the morning.” He rubbed at her Achilles’ tendon, keeping his mind on the feel of what was under her skin.

“All right,” she said, trying not to sound disappointed. “I’ll go bathe as soon as you’re done.”

“Very good,” he said, continuing his ministrations. “You should sleep very well.”

“I hope so,” she said with a spurt of nervous laughter.

He finished in silence, standing back with his hand extended to help her to sit up; she took it promptly, pulled herself erect, then released it more quickly than was necessary.

“Thank you, Dom. It was a very … helpful … I’ll be refreshed, come morning.” That was more for his benefit than to express her conviction. She got down from the table, stepping back from him as she did, her marvelous lassitude now almost gone. “The tub has hot water, you said?”

“Yes: it was filled from cauldrons set above the hearth-fire to boil. It was done while you were at supper. The water should be hot enough, but not scalding.” He inclined his head, sensing his flaring attraction to her. It had been four nights since he visited one of the women from Ulpia Traiana in her sleep, and his esurience was awakened, keyed by Nicoris’ dawning excitement. “There are a brush and a cloth for you to use.”

She flushed at this, and was baffled by the unexpected embarrassment that came over her. “I’ll let you know when I’ve finished, if you like,” she said, then turned abruptly and headed for the confession-cell, apparently unaware of the cold stones beneath her feet, or the chill that took hold of her as she got farther from the hearth; her breath came quickly.

A branch of oil-lamps stood beside the tub—an old tun cut in half, with a faint odor of wine still clinging to its ancient slats, with a rim a hand’s-breadth wide around the top—and there was a bench with the brush, cloth, towel, and night-wrap set out on it, as he had told her. Above the black, shiny water, specters of steam writhed over the surface, promising heat, which she suddenly desired as a starving person desires bread. She had a moment of self-reproach, then dismissed it. Shivering, she skinned out of her clothes as quickly as possible, grabbed the brush, climbed up onto the stool beside the barrel, and eased herself into the warm water, trying to minimize splashing as she sank into it up to her shoulders, her skin tingling. The sensations that ran through her made her gasp with a frightening kind of delectation. Closing her eyes and holding her breath, she slipped under the surface, remaining there until her chest began to ache; she stood up, the water streaming and steaming off her. She reached for the brush and started to scrub, starting with her feet and working her way up her body, her skin becoming more sensitive with each stroke. A twinge very like a cramp shot up her leg from her calf, and she gave a little cry, sloshing water as she struggled to keep her balance.

“Nicoris? Are you all right?” Sanctu-Germainios called to her.

“Yes,” she answered brusquely. “I …” What should she tell him? that she was flustered by his nearness? that she had become aroused by what his hands had done? that she wanted to share his bed? that she—? “I’m fine!” She took hold of the rim of the tub and steadied herself, preparing to emerge from the warm bath into the cold air.

“Have a care getting out,” he recommended while he pinched the flames on all but one of the oil-lamps. He looked around the alcove, his dark-seeing eyes making out the faint paintings on the walls, faded with age, detailing the life of Sanctu Eustachios the Hermit, or so the monks claimed: to Sanctu-Germainios, the murals showed the life of the Maiden of the Spring, a much older figure than Sanctu Eustachios. Saint or Maiden, the miracle-working spirit of the place was depicted as being tall, thin, and in flowing white robes. The Maiden of the Spring had been worshipped while Sanctu-Germainios still breathed, and her place in this isolated valley had been sacred before he was born. He sat down on the table and let his long memories wander back to that vanished time when his own people still lived in the eastern hook of these mountains, to his capture by the invaders from the east, and his execution at their hands, more than twenty-five centuries ago. “Why do they so often come from the east?” he murmured in a language that no one else on earth could speak now, except Rugierus, who had learned it from him.

“Dom Sanctu-Germainios,” Nicoris’ voice cut into his reverie. He shook off the hold of the past. “Is something wrong?”

“N … no, not wrong,” she responded. “It’s my mind; it won’t be still. My thoughts are … jumping like locusts. I can’t stop them.” Moving toward him through the darkened alcove, she concentrated on the single burning oil-lamp rather than on the shadow he had become. In her night-wrap she was pale as the mists hovering over the snow, her damp hair hanging unconfined; she looked very young as she came up to him. “Don’t tell me to pray.”

“Are you worried, or are you edgy from so much work?” He took the hand she held out to him, once again aware of the turmoil within her.

“Neither of those.” She went silent, summoning up the courage to tell him the truth. “I haven’t the right to ask this of you, and I know it, you being Dom and regional guardian, and Priam Corydon wouldn’t approve, and this being a holy place, but my body needs …
I
need … succor. Don’t make me go to one of the soldiers; they’re too rough. All the tenderness has been driven out of them.” Her eyes glittered in the lamplight as they fixed on him. “You are not a man to deny me, are you?”