Chapter Sixteen #2
and squared her shoulders. “I need to be there for her.”
On the river’s bank, Sophie lay
entwined in the roots of the old oak, her face as white as her
hair, her eyes dulled, unseeing. A blood-leeched gash gaped above
her left ear. Lara walked into the river without uttering a sound.
She stood staring into Sophie’s lifeless eyes. The woman who had
been her mother, sister, teacher, and friend, and who had raised
her and loved her for twenty-two years. Gone.
***
Talon
“Let me.” Talon waded hip
deep in the freezing water and carefully untangled Sophie’s body
from the roots that had kept her from floating farther
downriver.
He carried her sodden body back to the
house, Lara walking beside them as pale and silent as a ghost.
After laying Sophie on the table, he brought the hearth fire back
to life as Lara collected a washbasin and cloths, a pair of
scissors, and a tub of oil that smelled of rosemary. Lara set them
down beside Sophie and a shiver ran through her.
“You should change into
dry clothes, before you catch your dea…” Talon trailed off. If Lara
was aware of what he’d almost said, she didn’t show it. He took her
by both shoulders and gently led her to the loft’s ladder, then
stood by the fire, drying his own clothes until Lara came back
down.
“Is there anything you
need me to do?”
She shook her head, and Talon stood
helpless to do more than rub Wolf’s ears as Lara cut Sophie’s
sopping gown away and rubbed her body dry. She massaged the oil
into the old healer’s blue-tinged skin in an intimate dance that
Talon felt privileged to witness, her hands saying their farewell
to the woman who’d known her better than anybody, lingering lastly
over the deep blue bruise on her temple that had been her death
blow.
Sophie must have gone to fill the
water pitcher, slipped on the wet pallet, hit her head, and fallen
into the river. Whether she’d grasped the oaks roots to save
herself from drowning or the oak caught her already dead, Talon
didn’t know. But he did know that knock to the head had killed her,
and he was fairly certain she’d passed quickly and hopefully hadn’t
suffered much. It all seemed an ignoble end to Sophie the Sixth,
who he’d always had a vague notion of going out
fighting.
“Will you help me dress
her?” Lara startled Talon. It was the first she’d spoken since
finding Sophie.
They dressed her in a gray velveteen
gown, and then Lara cut sprigs of rosemary from the garden before
she sat in a rocking chair beside the hearth to weave the sprigs
into a wreath without saying another word or shedding a single
tear. When the wreath was finished, she stood over Sophie and ran a
hand down the old healer’s arm. With a heaving sigh, she drew
Sophie’s death shroud up over her and laid the wreath around her
head. Standing there staring down at her shrouded body, Lara had
gone to a place where Talon couldn’t follow. A place he knew too
well too young.
Talon pulled the rocker next to the
table and sat Lara down on it, unable to do more than stay and
watch over her until she came back.
He woke cold and bent and cramped in a
chair, alone but for Sophie, who lay in state on the table. The
front door was open, and he stepped out into the morning chill to
find Lara standing in the middle of the yard, a woolen scarf around
her shoulders, Wolf hugging her knee.
“Sunrise was always
Sophie’s favorite time of day,” she said, her voice subdued as she
gazed up into a brilliant amethyst sky with topaz clouds, a fitting
tribute to Sophie the Sixth. “The dawning, she called it.” She
smiled, sad and bittersweet, her gaze never leaving the crystalline
sky. “She should be buried beneath the old oak, facing
east.”
Talon hated leaving Lara, but the
grievous news of Sophie’s death and the business of burying her
needed to be dealt with. Halfway out the door, he turned to ask
Lara if she’d truly be all right, but she was already sitting in
the rocker, her hand on the shroud over Sophie’s arm, Wolf now
lying on the floor beside her. He left them for what would be their
last time alone together.
He entered the keep through the
kitchens, where Berta sat at table with Anglbert eating a breakfast
of cold ham and eggs, as close and cozy as an old married
couple.
“One of the advantages to
an old soldier’s habit of rising at dawn,” Anglbert said with a
glint in his eye. Then he saw Talon. “Captain?”
He half stood as Talon pressed his
lips tight. Talon looked to Berta. He’d searched for the right
words to tell her that her lifelong friend was gone the entire ride
to the keep. In the end, there was no kind way to tell her, so he
simply said it. “Sophie’s dead.”
It took a moment for the terrible
truth to sink in, and when it did, Berta’s legs gave out. Anglbert
caught her, and when she came to, it was his face, his eyes that
reaffirmed the awful reality.
“I’m so very sorry.” Talon
laid a hand on her shaking shoulder as she sobbed into Anglbert’s.
He gave Anglbert’s shoulder a squeeze as well. “I’ll let the others
know. See to your lady.”
“No.” Berta lifted her
tear-streaked face. “I should go to Lara. There are preparations to
make, funeral cakes to bake.” She wiped her tears and smoothed her
apron. “The Abbot Rogert needs to be sent for to perform the burial
rites.” She took in a shaky breath and let it out with a sigh.
“He’s at the Abbey St. Marie.”
“Right.” Anglbert gave her
a kiss on her cheek. “I’ll go for the abbot.”
***
They buried Sophie under the oak at
sunset with the Abbot Rogert presiding over the funeral rites and
half the valley in attendance. Lara stood still and pale beside the
abbot throughout the service, her gaze never leaving Sophie’s grave
until the last shovel full of dirt was patted down. Talon cupped
her elbow and wrapped an arm around her waist, letting her lean on
him as they walked back into the house. She sat in Sophie’s rocker
by the hearth and accepted the villagers’, and several of his
soldiers’, teary condolences and heartfelt tributes, thanking them,
comforting them with her soft smiles and words, performing her last
duty to Sophie, as gracious as any queen. The abbot, who had spoken
to Talon only to introduce himself when he’d first arrived, watched
both Lara and Talon closely, and spoke privately with Berta in a
far corner of the house for what looked to be a very serious
conversation.
It was well into the night when Talon
closed the door behind the last mourner, after assuring Berta he’d
keep watch over Lara, who stood and rolled the rug back from the
trapdoor that Talon had heard bump and squeak the day he’d talked
to Sophie about his wildcat. She pulled the door open and stepped
down onto a ladder, stopping when her head was level with Wolf’s.
She leaned her forehead into his, kissed him on the nose, and
whispered something into the sad-eyed hound’s ear. Lifting her head
from Wolf’s, she met Talon’s worried frown with a tremulous smile,
the first tear he’d seen her shed through it all slipping down her
cheek. Then her face crumpled, and she went down the ladder and
pulled the door shut.
Tired, lost in Lara’s grief, he locked
the house up, then pulled the rocker next to the trapdoor and took
up his post. He and Wolf would keep guard as candlelight shone
through cracks in the floor, Talon’s ears attuned to Lara’s pacing
and weeping below.
The first gray streaks of dawn lit the
sky when Talon realized it had grown quiet in the cellar. After
slowly pulling the trapdoor open, he peered down into the cellar to
find Lara sleeping on a pile of blankets in the middle of the
planked floor. A hide-bound tome sat on a small table beside a
guttering candle, and shelves on every wall were lined with bottles
of tinctures and potions, wheels of cheeses, and baskets of roots
and fungi. The tools of her and Sophie’s trade.
He shut the trapdoor, spread out on
the floor alongside it, and took the opportunity to snatch some
sleep, only to be woken up a short time later by an insistent
knocking at the door.
“Where is she?” Berta
bustled past Talon as he opened the door. Anglbert, Phillipe, and
Denys followed her in.
“Sleeping.” Talon shook
his head as Berta went to the ladder that led to the loft, then
nodded toward the cellar door.
“Ah,” Berta said. “How
long?”
“She went down after
everyone left last night. But she’s only been sleeping since dawn
broke.”
“Poor lamb,” Berta
clucked. “She must be worn out.” She looked around the house and
set her hands on her hips. “I’ll see to the house and the food.”
She nodded toward the table where Sophie had lain in state, now
covered with gifts of breads and cakes and pies. “You men see to
the livestock. Out, now.” She shooed Talon, who was reluctant to
leave his post, guarding Lara. “Out, I say, before you wake the
poor dear with all your clomping about.”
Talon shooed along with the others and
Wolf, but while the three soldiers stood staring about the yard and
stables, trying to figure out what needed doing where, Denys jumped
right in.
“Here.” He handed Anglbert
and Phillipe an empty basket each. “The apples need gathering. Just
the ones that’ve dropped. Don’t pick any from the
trees.”
“Yes, sir.” Phillipe
saluted Denys, then elbowed Anglbert, who grumbled as they headed
for the orchard.
Talon led Gaea and Honey out of their
stalls into the little corral, where he spread hay for the horses
and goats and watched Denys cajole a ruffled hen from her nest as
he gathered eggs from their roost.
“How attached are you to
being a stablehand at the keep?” he asked the lad.
“I like the work well
enough,” Denys told him. “And the pay’s good. Better’n I’d earn
anywhere else as I’ll not work for the count.”
Talon clapped a hand on his shoulder.
“I may have a job for you, if you’re interested.”
***
Lara
Lara woke slowly to a dim light
hovering over her. She focused her eyes on the square of light
shining down through the open cellar door and sat up, her head
pounding as she drained the pitcher of water on the stool next to
her pile of blankets, her chest aching with a hole as big and empty