Thief (24 page)

Chapter Twenty-four

The sickness reeled Sorcha in and out of awareness like a fish in a fever-tossed sea. Sometimes the water was cold, icy cold. Other times it burned the very strength from her body until her brain felt as though it fried and withered in her head. Oh, how it ached. Often more than her arm, which was tender even to the weight of the blankets. Only in sleep was there relief. And nothing put her to sleep like Owain’s voice.

“You must be a bard or an angel,” she told him during a lull in the agony.

“Neither, milady.” He sat on a bench near the hearth with a smile that, like his touch, was warm and gentle as sunshine.

“Something tells me you’d be exceptional at whatever you choose to do,” Sorcha observed.

“Well,
I
never heard of bard, or angel, or doctor that smelled like fish,” Caden griped from the foot of her bed, where he always seemed to be.

Owain laughed. “’Tis the curse of handling them day in and out.”

Sorcha didn’t notice. ’Twas the foul stench of the medicine Caden coaxed into her each time she awoke that seemed fixed in her nostrils. Owain came and went and changed her bandage, but Caden was always there. He helped her don a clean shirt, keeping his gaze averted, and held her head in his lap, stroking it when the pain was unbearable, until Owain’s voice lulled her to sleep.

And then the pain was gone, even when Sorcha sat up to take her supper. And time began again. For three days, she’d been unaware of it.

“I should like to bathe and don a dress,” she announced after a delicious meal of bread and potted grouse, compliments of Owain’s hunting skills. “If you gentlemen wouldn’t mind.”

“Why do you need your dress when tomorrow you’ll be back in shirt and trews?” Caden complained. “Are you expecting company?”

“I would like to feel human again … like a woman.”

“You need no dress for that, milady,” Owain said from the board, where he washed the wooden plates they’d used. “At least on our account. But if it’s for yours, by all means.”

“Well!” Caden shot up from the stool and slapped his thighs. “Had I known a dress would make me feel better, I’d have kept one in my sack for battle wounds.” He snatched up a yew pail, his mouth twisted as wryly as his voice. “I’ll fetch your water, milady.”

A hand bath was a lovely notion, but by the time Sorcha had completed her toilet, she was too exhausted for the evening she’d envisioned of trying her hand at Owain’s harp and joining him in song. She hardly heard Owain’s flowery praise at her change of clothing or Caden’s grudging compliment. Instead, she slept in the rich gown she’d worn at Eavlyn’s wedding.

The following morning, Sorcha climbed into Owain’s curragh wearing Tunwulf’s clean, sun-freshened clothing and feeling sheepish for indulging her feminine whims the night before. There hadn’t been enough decent wood to repair the bottom of the coble, so she had to trust Caden and Owain’s assurance that Owain’s wicker-framed craft was safe enough. Slung over her shoulder were her belongings, including a linen-wrapped jar of the vile medicinal tea Owain insisted she needed to take morning, noon, and night until it was all gone.

Taking extreme care as to the placement of her foot on the stem to stern willow strips, she settled on a bench in the prow. How on earth could tarred cowhide over a wicker frame be seaworthy enough for the river, much less the ocean voyages Owain told her of?

Heavenly Father, You’ve protected us thus far, and it’s from my heart that I ask You to see us safely on to my mother.

Sorcha smiled to herself, somewhat pacified and most pleased with her prayer. Her time with Eavlyn and listening to Owain pray over her arm and his guests and give thanks for his heathland home and all its creatures had not been wasted. Sorcha had a gift for words. And after surviving this long, she’d begun to think the Christian God might actually be listening to her.

“Do you believe in angels, Owain?”

Caden jerked his head about from where he stowed stores for the day’s journey upstream. “Don’t tell me you’ve found a leak already, woman.”

Laughter bubbled in Sorcha’s throat. “I’m just curious. And Owain’s a scholar,” she reminded him.

“Aye, he probably knows their wingspan,” Caden quipped.

“Scripture says they exist, milady. So I have no reason to doubt them.” Owain stood back to let Caden take the middle seat.

“Princess Eavlyn saw one.”

With that, Sorcha entertained her host as they started upriver, telling him the story of the hunt and the meanings of the carvings on Father Martin’s staff. It turned out Owain was something of a biblical scholar as well and embellished the tales even more while he and Caden rowed upstream, the latter thin-lipped and unaccountably sullen.

“But as to the angel the princess saw,” Owain observed, “’twas real to her, I’m sure. No one knows why some see God’s messengers and others don’t.”

“So you think it was real,” Sorcha pressed. These things intrigued her. Made her wonder.

“It isn’t for me to say. I wasn’t there.”

“I’m thinking there’s a bit of eel in you, Owain, the way you slip away from answers,” Caden observed.

“Caden, listen to yourself,” Sorcha chided. “Good as Owain has been to us, and you pick at him like a cross old crow.” She stifled a yawn.

“Don’t upset yourself, milady,” Owain spoke up. “The man’s been worried sick over you these last days and short of rest.”

“Speaking of which, you should rest,” Caden told her. “Once we land in Hahlton, we’ll be on our way hard afoot.”

Sorcha’s elation from being well and on their way again wavered. They had to move on, she knew, but the least effort wearied her.

“There’s a trader there who deals in livestock,” Owain told them. “He has a gift with the wild marsh ponies. They’re small and wiry, living on the scrub as they do, but tough. If you’ve coin, you might find one for the lady.”

“We’ve got gold.” Sorcha patted her sack, thrilled at the prospect, until she saw Caden’s warning glower.

How could the man suspect Owain would do them harm after all he’d done to help them? Still, it was foolish to announce it. She’d been a thief long enough to know that.

“A little,” she added, searching Owain’s blue eyes for any betrayal of kindling greed. But all she found was a sincerity that rang true to the bone.

Sliding off the bench, she reached under the cover of the prow and took out a blanket Owain had stashed in there. Her injured arm twinged with warning, but she could open and close her fist now that the swelling and infection had eased. This morning the majority of her flesh had returned to pink, except for what looked to be a burn scar right around the broken skin. Drawing the woolen blanket about her shoulders, she nestled into the curve of the side, her harp sack bundled close in her arms.

Owain continued to tell Caden about Gabon, the old livestock trader for whom the young scholar had worked as a lad. He warned of Gabon’s keen business sense. “He’ll try to sell the half-broke for the same as the others, but he keeps a few older mares for breeding. It’ll cost more, but I’d get one of those for the lady.”

Truth was, unaccustomed as she was to sitting astride a horse, she still ached from the ride to the hunt. The Cymri were known for their horsemanship, but Saxons usually preferred to hunt and fight afoot. Even the nobility. Her father disdained horsemanship, believing it was more for prestige than practicality on a battlefield. A bigger target to bring down.

Sorcha closed her eyes as the talk of horses eased the tension between the two men. Caden had a warhorse called Forstan. Like those of Arthur’s warband—huge, powerful, and not native to the island. He may have ridden it the day of the hunt, but Sorcha had been too distracted to notice. What a tragedy that he’d had to leave his noble Forstan behind.

Because of her. Granted, she hadn’t directly caused their predicament, but if he’d not come for her, he’d not be here now. And who knew where she’d be? Dead by now, most likely.

Cracking her eyes open, she watched Caden rowing the vessel, his rugged face animated now as he spoke of Forstan. But she’d seen that same face wracked with worry as he’d held her over the past three days. Owain’s music and medicines soothed her pain, but it was Caden who felt it and suffered with her.

Heavenly Father, I thank You for sending Caden for me.

As she prayed, a sweet peace washed over Sorcha, akin to that she found in Caden’s embrace, but deeper, cradling heart and soul.

Hahlton was an unwalled keep, no more than a scatter of cottages and shops around a central grazing area, where the moor began to rise toward the western hills. Landing the curragh meant pulling it up on the riverbank and walking up a long muddy path strewn with straw to the reeve’s house, the largest of the dwellings and shops. It was there the king’s man collected rents in dried fish and corn raised in the squares of fertile fields tended by the farm folk.

“Why didn’t you bring your catch of eels?” Sorcha asked Owain as she tried to keep her steps on a wide length of board placed in front of the row of shops. “It looks like it’s market day.”

If one could call a few dozen men, women, and children gathered round carts in the square a market. Most of them paid more attention to the newcomers than the wares on the two wagons belonging to traveling merchants, one selling textiles, the other kitchenware. Sorcha knew, from her own business, that these were likely the last the village would see of such things until spring.

“My profit lies in Din Guardi, not here,” Owain replied. “Hahlton has fishermen enough to feed its bellies.” He motioned to a tavern where a group of men stood under a sign that read
The Blue Crow.
“I’ll be there catching up with old friends.”

“You’re not coming with us?” Sorcha protested.

Owain dazzled her with a smile that kindled fire in her cheeks. “Nothing I say will win you favor with Gabon.”

“Grinned stupid till you drove him mad, did you?” Caden quipped. But he offered his hand, removing the edge from his accusation. “So where is this Gabon?”

“His place is the one with all the fences.” Owain pointed to a cottage that looked more like a barn from which grew wattled enclosures rather than the golden-grain stubble in the other fields. Beyond it, the scrubland gave way to forest that thickened and rose toward the sky.

“So this is good-bye?” Although Sorcha felt better and had medicine in her bag, the thought of losing her capable physician’s company pricked her with dread.

“Come to the tavern when your business is done,” he told her, “for the best fish cakes you’ve ever tasted … and a cup of medicinal tea.”

“Ugh.” She wrinkled her nose and slipped her arm through Caden’s. “We’ll see you there, then.”

“But we need to get away soon as we purchase provisions,” Caden reminded her.

As the two of them walked away, she sighed. “I’m going to miss Owain. What a delightful companion. I wonder why one of those young women ogling the bolts of cloth on that wagon hasn’t set her mind on getting his attention.”

“Maybe they don’t like a man prettier than they are,” Caden drawled, dour.

“Is that why you don’t like him?” Mischief pulled Sorcha’s gaze to Caden’s. Dare she hope the big lug of a Cymri was jealous? Just a wee bit?

“I don’t trust him.” Caden screwed up his face, as though searching for the reason. “He’s like finding an onion in a fruit pasty,” he explained. “The onion has its place, mind you, but not where it is.”