Chapter Twenty #3
After her husband had been tended, and his torso wrapped tightly, the situation had settled down until Troy appeared later that night to gently tell Mattie that Maksim had been killed in the attack.
At first, she hadn’t really understood his words.
They made no sense. It simply wasn’t possible that Maksim could have been killed, because he was a skilled knight.
She had only just seen him yesterday. Moreover, he had been excited to establish his legacy, so he couldn’t be dead due to something as random as a Scots raid.
But he was.
Still, she refused to believe it.
Against Troy’s better judgment, he heeded her request to see her brother for herself and took her down to the sublevels, near the kitchen, where they were storing the dead in the cold, dark vault.
There were about a dozen bodies down there, covered up, and Troy took her to one in particular that was on a table.
Carefully, he peeled back the blanket that was covering the head to reveal that it was, in fact, Maksim.
He had been dead for several hours, so his face was mottled in color and his mouth was open, his jaw tightening in the throes of decay.
It hardly looked like her brother at all, but it was.
Maksim was actually dead.
Throwing herself across her brother’s corpse, Mattie wept hysterically.
She wasn’t even sure how long she remained with him, weeping, apologizing over and over.
She didn’t know why she was apologizing to him, only that she was.
She was sorry for the life he would never lead, the children he would never have.
She was sorry for all of those things, but most of all, she was sorry to lose her only sibling.
They’d come to Gleann na Fola with such hope.
Now, hope was gone.
The pain was unbearable.
When Troy had duties to attend to, he stayed with Mattie in that icy vault as she expended her grief.
Since Gar couldn’t, he felt obligated to.
For Mattie, it seemed like a horrible nightmare she was praying to wake up from.
She didn’t even remember how she’d come back up to the master’s chamber where Gar was sleeping on the bed, only that she was suddenly there and she had left her brother behind in that freezing vault.
Another look at Gar on their bed, his torso bound up and his skin pale with blood loss, and she burst into tears all over again.
She managed to make it over into a corner in the servants’ alcove, huddle down, and weep inconsolably.
In the stillness of the chamber, it was a heartbreaking sound.
Winchester, who had been under the bed, came to her and lay down next to her as her grief found an outlet.
Jordan tried to coax Mattie into coming out and sitting by Gar, but Mattie wasn’t ready to do that yet.
She’d had two horrible shocks, one after the other, and she was coping with it the best way she could.
Unrestrained tears.
Jordan finally left her alone and simply let her cry it out.
That lasted for about six hours. Mattie wept until she could weep no more, now having to resign herself to a world her brother wasn’t in.
Worse still, she had to tell her parents and she knew how it would destroy them.
Especially her father. But she eventually came out of the alcove, apologized to Jordan for her weakness, and took a seat next to the bed where Gar was starting to show signs of a fever.
Since nearly the moment he was injured, Jordan and Scott had begun brewing something they called “rotten tea” that smelled awful but was said to kill the poison associated with wounds.
It was made from the blue mold that grew on bread and then steeped with water to create a brew.
At least, that was what Mattie had observed.
The process seemed mysterious. All she really knew was that her trust was in Gar’s grandmother and uncle, and they seemed to know what they were doing when it came to healing her husband.
He was in the hands of experts.
Mattie’s duty was much simpler. It was her job to use cool water and rags to bathe Gar’s face and arms, trying to keep his temperature down.
She worked diligently at it, only stopping when Jordan forced her to rest. But she couldn’t sleep, and neither could Winchester, and over the past day or so, the dog had taken to crawling into bed with Gar and lying by his side.
Mattie would remove him, but somehow, he would find his way back up again.
Finally, she simply left him, bathing her husband’s hot brow with cool water as Winchester lay next to Gar with his head on the man’s shoulder.
He seemed to sense that something was terribly wrong and, truthfully, it gave Mattie comfort to have him there.
At least he wasn’t trying to bite Gar anymore.
She was grateful for small mercies.
Her now-placid dog reminded her of the breeches he’d destroyed and her attention would drift, every so often, to the patchwork breeches that were now hanging over the back of a chair.
The entire right side of them had been stained with Gar’s blood, but at some point since Gar was injured, Jordan had given the breeches over to a laundress, who’d soaked them in icy water and then in vinegar to remove the bloodstain.
They did something else to the stain to try to remove it, but even with all of that, the stain’s yellowish outline remained.
But so did the breeches.
No matter what Gar put them through, they were enduring.
Just like Mattie’s love for Gar.
She took such comfort in that bit of clothing.
She’d once regretted making them, but no longer.
Now, they signified something solid and important.
As the hours passed and Gar seemed to linger in a fevered state, Mattie made sure those breeches were just where he could see them should he suddenly awaken and want to get out of bed.
But… as the hours passed and Gar didn’t awaken, it was difficult not to feel despair.
Those breeches became a symbol of what had been.
She prayed they wouldn’t become a symbol of loss.
The third day after Gar’s injury, Mattie was sitting on the bed next to him, bathing his sticky forehead with cool water as Jordan slept in a nearby chair and Winchester lay across Gar’s feet.
Mattie knew that men had arrived over the past couple of days, men with armies, more knights coming in and out of a castle that was under repair, but she didn’t pay any attention to what was going on.
It didn’t matter as long as Gar remained as he was, drifting on a sea of limbo, between life and death.
All Mattie cared about was bringing him into the shore where she was waiting.
She was willing to do anything to bring him back to her.
“There once was a lady fair,
With silver bells in her hair.
I knew her to have,
A luscious kiss… it drove me mad!
But she denied me… and I was so terribly sad!”
That was all she remembered of the song that Gar and some of the others had sung at their wedding, and she sang it off-key, but it was enough to bring Jordan out of a deep sleep. Her head came up, her eyes still half closed, as she recognized the tune of the naughty wedding song.
“God’s Bones, lass,” she said sleepily. “Dunna tell me he taught ye that song?”
Mattie looked over at her, grinning. “He did not exactly teach me,” she said. “But he sang it more than once at our wedding. I just remember a few words.”
“Good,” Jordan said flatly. “When he wakes, remind me tae beat him for singing that song in front of ye.”
Mattie laughed softly. “I did not mind,” she said, looking at Gar again. “I like to think that he sang it because he was happy. I was just trying to remind him of that.”
Her smile faded and Jordan watched the expression on her face, a young woman trying so hard to be courageous when her happiness hung by a thread.
“Then I’ll let ye sing it again if it pleases ye,” she said. “But dunna ask me the rest of the words. A lady should not know such words.”
Mattie smiled weakly. “I will not ask,” she said. “But… if I may, I do have a question.”
“What is it, lass?”
“Have you ever seen anyone injured this badly recover from it?”
Jordan nodded without hesitation. “Of course,” she said. “Mattie, there is always hope. Let me tell ye a story about Poppy. Ye’ve noticed that he’s missing an eye.”
Mattie nodded. “Aye.”
Jordan pulled her old, tattered shawl more tightly around her shoulders as her mind wandered to the memories surrounding William’s missing eye.
“I was pregnant with Scott and Troy,” she said. “William had been in London serving the king and part of those duties had him in Wales. The details of the battles are mostly lost tae me now, but he received a bolt tae the eye in one particular fight. That is how he lost the eye.”
Mattie frowned, sympathetic to such a horror. “That is awful,” she said. “How in the world did he survive it?”
Jordan sighed. “That is the question,” she said softly.
“The bolt should have gone through his head, but only by the grace of God, it dinna. But it destroyed the eye well enough. By the time I reached London, William was in a terrible state. He was feverish and quite ill. I lay with him, I talked to him, I pleaded with him. Truly, Mattie, he should have died. But he dinna. ’Tis amazing what love can do. ”
Mattie looked at Gar. ’Tis amazing what love can do. She’d told him once that she was fairly certain she was in love with him. Perhaps that was not when he’d needed to hear it.
Perhaps he needed to hear it now.
A knock on the door roused Jordan out of her chair as Mattie remained on the bed, looking at Gar. As the older woman toddled over to the door to answer it, Mattie leaned down, her lips next to Gar’s left ear.