Chapter Eleven
Two days later
The fever was gone but he still wouldn’t awaken.
Eiselle hadn’t left Bric’s side since the night he’d been brought in to Narborough with his terrible injury.
She’d bathed the man, changed his bandages, and sat by his side every single minute of the day and night.
She wouldn’t even go to bed, not even when Keeva begged her, instead choosing to sleep with her head on the mattress beside Bric as she sat in a chair next to the bed.
It was uncomfortable, and she awoke with a stiff neck and back, but she ignored her discomfort.
All that mattered was taking care of Bric, and she wanted to be there should he need her.
Manducor had been there most of the time, too, because he had more experience in such things.
He would check Bric’s pulse and his breathing, freeing Weetley up to tend to the men in the hall.
Out of the eighteen hundred men who had gone to Holdingham, seventy-eight had died and they had over three hundred wounded, so Weetley had his hands full with the wounded in the hall and also in the troop house, where they had taken some of the lesser wounded men.
But almost three days after their return, some men were taking a turn for the worse while others were showing signs of healing.
They were starting to lose some men to infection, and the dead began to pile up.
St. Peter and St. Paul’s church was just to the east of Narborough Castle and Daveigh had already spoken to the priests about burying the dead in a mass grave to the east of the church.
The priests had agreed, and soldiers had been sent to dig the mass grave.
Daveigh wasn’t willing to let the stench of the dead to start offending the women at Narborough, so the decision was made to start moving the dead over to the churchyard the following day.
But Eiselle was oblivious to that, and to everything else going on.
Dashiell had remained for a couple of days after Bric’s injury, for as long as he could, but he had an army waiting for him, an army with wounded that had remained at Holdingham because moving them back to the seat of Savernake would take several days.
Dashiell had wounded men he needed to see and plans to make to return to Ramsbury Castle, so after two days of waiting around to see if Bric would live or die, Dashiell was forced to leave.
Eiselle had promised to send him word of Bric’s condition, and she’d been driven to tears by Dashiell’s painful farewell to his old friend.
She’d never seen such camaraderie between men, but in observing Dashiell and Pearce and Mylo, and even Daveigh, she had been given a glimpse of just how much these men meant to one another.
It was a loyalty that went beyond politics – it was a loyalty that was in their blood.
She’d bid Dashiell a sad farewell as the man returned to his own army.
Now, three days after Bric’s return to Narborough, Eiselle was starting to feel the stress of waiting for a man who refused to awaken.
As Manducor had instructed her, she’d spoken to the man constantly, keeping up a steady stream of chatter, praying that he would hear her and open his eyes.
But on the third day of Bric’s unconsciousness, she took to singing to him, singing every song she could think of, including the one she’d sung to him on their wedding night.
“I have loved, all my life, only thee;
The stars know thy name, the sky weeps at your beauty.
I pray thou will return to my arms,
but if not,
I pray to see thy face every night in my dreams.”
It was such a bittersweet song, with new meaning these days.
Eiselle was too afraid to ask Weetley if Bric was deteriorating, so she simply kept up her singing, her chatter, bathing Bric’s face, arms, and chest with cool water, and making sure the hearth was stoked so the room remained warm. She didn’t want him to catch a chill.
As the third day began to move into night and the great torches in the hall were lit, Eiselle sat next to Bric’s bedside, watching her husband waste away before her very eyes.
She’d done so well over the past three days, with no hysterics or tears, but time was wearing on her now.
As she looked at the man, feeling the pangs of grief pull at her, she stroked his sticky blond hair and sang softly to him.
O lovely one… my lovely one…
The years will come… the years will go…
But still you’ll be… my own true love…
Until the day… we’ll meet again…
Her throat was tight with emotion as she finished the song, unable to go any further.
She simply wasn’t as strong as she thought she was because the anguish she’d been fighting off for three days was now clawing at her, gutting her, begging her to release her emotions as the future she’d hope to have with a man she adored was slipping away.
As the fire in the hearth snapped, sending sparks into the room, Eiselle finally lay her exhausted head down on the mattress next to Bric, feeling overwhelmed and despondent.
Is this how it will end, God? She thought, putting her hand on Bric’s chest in a protective gesture. Will I become a widow, with dreams of a life that never was, without a man I know I could have grown to love?
The tears came as she closed her eyes, with the intention of resting only for a moment.
“Please, Bric,” she whispered, her cheek against his big bicep. “Please do not leave me. Please do not let this be over before it begins.”
There was no response to a question full of agony. Before Eiselle realized it, she was asleep.
He’d been dreaming of angels.
They were singing to him, in a voice so pure and lovely that he wanted to listen to them forever.
He’d been dreaming of someplace hot and bright, with a blinding white light, and heat that made him sweat.
He’d been a little too young to go on King Richard’s crusade to The Holy Land, but he’d heard from others that the heat had been intense.
Pale, white knights had returned with skin the color of tanned leather.
He’d always imagined what that kind of heat felt like, and now he knew.
He’d been kissed by it.
Gradually, the white light faded and the singing stopped, and then he felt cold and alone.
He’d never felt more alone in his life. Where was the singing angel, the one who had kept him company and had given him comfort?
Oddly enough, he never saw the angel who had done the singing.
He could only hear her, but she sounded familiar.
He just couldn’t place her. He thought he could remain in that warm, blissful land, but it dissipated, like mist, and then he heard the crackling of a hearth.
His ears began to buzz and when he breathed, he was aware of pain in his torso.
He took a breath and he felt as if he were being stabbed on his left side.
Bric struggled to open his eyes, but his eyelids felt as if they weighed more than the big stones that comprised Narborough.
He could barely get them open, and even then, they were only open a slit.
He could see that he was in his chamber off the entry in Narborough’s keep and he turned his head slightly, seeing that there was a small arm across the right side of his body, with the hand resting on his chest. Turning his head just a little more and looking down, he could see that Eiselle’s face was pressed up against his right bicep, and it was her arm that was draped over him.
“My lord?”
Someone was speaking to him and his eyes, red and swollen, moved off to his left to see the priest standing there.
It was the drunken, slovenly man who had performed his marriage mass, only he didn’t look drunk or slovenly now.
He looked quite lucid and, in truth, quite concerned as he gazed down at him.
Bric tried to speak, but his throat was raw and parched. He could only whisper.
“How… long?” he murmured.
Manducor moved closer so the man wouldn’t have to strain himself. “How long have you been unconscious?” he asked. When Bric nodded, barely, Manducor answered. “At least three days, my lord. How do you feel?”
Bric wasn’t even sure he could answer that, so he tried to shake his head, but that didn’t work out particularly well, either. He could barely move. Manducor sensed that, so he didn’t press the man; he simply told him the situation, as he suspected a straightforward man like MacRohan would want.
“You were wounded by an arrow five days ago,” he said.
“You were brought back to Narborough where the surgeon, Weetley, has cleaned the wound and stitched it. You have been very sick, my lord, and now that you are awake, it is important that you drink a potion the surgeon has brewed for you. I know you are weak, but your lady wife and I will help you.”
Manducor reached over him to wake Eiselle, but Bric found his voice. “Nay,” he whispered hoarsely. “Let her sleep.”
Manducor paused. “She will be angry if we do not wake her,” he said. “She has not left your side, my lord. She has been here the entire time, singing to you and speaking to you. She has been quite worried for you.”
She has been here the entire time, singing to you.
Those words echoed in Bric’s groggy mind.
The angel singing in his dreams – had that been her?
That sweet voice that kept him comforted, that kept him alive?
He found himself turning to Eiselle, who was sleeping so heavily against his arm that she was drooling.
“She… she has been here?” he rasped.
Manducor nodded. “She has not left you,” he said. Then, he looked down at Bric’s left hand and reached down to unwind something from his wrist. He held it up. “She returned your talisman, my lord. She seemed to think it meant something to you.”