Chapter Ten #4
“’Tis more than that and you know it. You will rot here unless you tell me what I want to know.”
“I shall not help ye crush my people more than ye already have.”
“If that is all you can see in this situation, then you are a fool.”
With that, he turned and quit the cell with Tate and Lane on his heels.
The guard locked the grate and the cold clang of the bolt being thrown echoed through the vault.
Kynan sat against the stone where Stephen had tossed him, smarting and disoriented with the turn of events.
The conversation with the English knight had him reeling in spite of everything.
The situation was not so clear after all.
*
The first thing she was cognizant of was that her eyelids felt as if they weighed one hundred pounds apiece.
They were so heavy that she couldn’t open them.
And her head pounded painfully. Joselyn tried to lick her lips but there was no moisture in her mouth, not a drop.
She must have sighed or made a noise, because Stephen was suddenly beside her.
“Jo-Jo?” he whispered. “Are you awake, sweetheart?”
She tried to speak but all she could manage to utter was a pathetic groan. A cool cloth touched her cheek and brow.
“Sleep, love,” Stephen whispered, kissing her on the cheek. “Just sleep.”
She did. Fading off, she spent an indeterminable amount of time in blissful darkness.
But then the dreams came, crazy things, in which she could see her parents again.
Her father, her mother, her grandmother.
All making themselves busy in her dreams. They rushed past her, around her, and she could not keep track of them.
Then she was back at Allanton, her family’s home, and she could even smell the violets that grew in great bunches against the manor wall.
She was in the kitchens, watching her grandmother cook barley loaves and her mother was boiling down apples to make the wonderful apple butter she used to put out every fall.
She wanted some of that apple butter.
But she couldn’t seem to make it over to the hearth where her mother was cooking.
She was rooted to the chair, sitting, watching everyone else go by her.
Her grandmother picked up the barley loaves and they suddenly burst into flame, ashes falling to the floor.
The kitchen seemed to be heating up and the apple butter boiled over, spilling into a fire that was now shooting flames into the room.
She tried to get away from the flames but she couldn’t move.
Everything was hot and frightening around her.
She began to think that she might be in hell.
It felt like it. And it was growing hotter.
Stephen had been awake all night, watching Joselyn sleep heavily.
She awoke once, he thought, but she promptly fell back asleep.
Just after dawn, sleep claimed Stephen as well as he sat next to the bed, his great head on the mattress near Joselyn’s still form.
He had been asleep for a few hours when the mattress began to twitch, rousing him from his exhaustion.
His head came up, alert, as he fixed on Joselyn.
She was quivering and he immediately put his hand on her head, feeling a fairly significant fever.
Though he had expected it, still, he had hoped the heat of the wound would pass her by.
It was disheartening but he was not overly panicked about it.
It could be controlled. He removed his hand from her head and sent Tilda, sitting quietly in the corner, for plenty of cool water.
As he moved for his medicament bag, Joselyn spoke.
“Apple butter,” she mumbled.
Stephen froze at the sound of her voice, his brow furrowing as he attempted to figure out if she was lucid or not.
“Apple butter?” he repeated, amusement in his voice. “Do you want apple butter?”
Surprisingly, her eyes lolled open and she tried to push herself up using her left arm. The right arm, bandaged against her body by Stephen to keep it immobile, was useless.
“Apple butter,” she said again, then slammed back onto the mattress.
Stephen tried to steady her so she would not rip out his stitches. “Lay still, sweetheart,” he said soothingly. “All will be well.”
She didn’t seem particularly eased by his words. “Apple butter,” she said insistently, rolling about.
Stephen held her still as she tried to squirm. “I will get you apple butter if you stop moving,” he told her. “Jo-Jo, can you understand me? You must be still.”
She stopped fidgeting and the pale blue eyes opened, staring into space.
Stephen waved a hand in front of her eyes but she didn’t track his movements, nor did she blink.
She just stared. Had he not been concerned about the fever, he would have found her behavior rather humorous.
But he realized she was mildly delirious.
With one eye on her, he went back to his medicament case to find something for her fever.
Suddenly, she bolted upright, nearly pitching herself off the bed.
Stephen grabbed her before she could fall and gently laid her back on the bed, trying to position her so it would not put any strain on her wound.
She reached up her good arm and began scratching at his face and neck, as one would scratch an itch.
It was not violent in the least but he dodged her wriggling fingers as he tried to hold her still.
“Jo-Jo, sweetheart, you must be still,” he insisted gently. “Be still, love.”
She scratched at his stubble, his mouth, and began to giggle. Then her arm fell back to the mattress and she tried to claw her way off the bed. Stephen corralled her.
“Apple butter,” she sighed.
He sat on the bed beside her, his massive arms braced on either side of her slender body, and watched her eyes slowly close. With a faint smirk, because her behavior was truly funny, he shook his head and dared to move back to his bag once more.
Rummaging through his bag, he extracted a leather envelope of another whitish powder. He dared to move away from the bed and collect a cup with a small amount of wine in it, left over from a meal he’d had the night before.