Chapter Thirteen
St. Margaret’s of Loch Doom
There was a good deal of coughing going on.
Lying on her cot, pushed over against the wall to keep it out of the draft, Leonore had been listening to the big knight on the other side of the sanctuary cough heavily for the last several minutes.
He couldn’t quite seem to catch his breath, so he lay there and hacked.
Given that she was from the people who spent most of their time at sea in a chill climate, she had been around men who had their fair share of illnesses.
But she knew this particular illness was her fault.
Her condition, however, wasn’t nearly as bad as his.
He had seemed to take the brunt of whatever she brought with her, and this was the third day of their illnesses.
Leonore was holding her own while Mateo seemed to be getting worse.
The truth was that she felt rather guilty about it, considering he was only ill because of her.
Even now, she lay staring at the ceiling, listening to him cough and wondering if someone was going to help him.
But he just kept at it. Finally, she turned her head enough to see that there wasn’t anyone in the sanctuary other than her and the sick knight.
It seemed as if the sanctuary had been full of women since she got there, but not at this moment.
She and her sick savior seemed to be on their own.
Quietly, Leonore set up in bed, coughing a few times herself before she was able to catch her breath.
She was still dressed in the same clothing she’d been dressed in when she had been brought here, the very same clothing she had been wearing on her journey across the sea and even months before that.
Because she had been a hostage, she didn’t have any personal possessions, but what she was really missing was her shoes.
She didn’t have them anymore, so she could only imagine they were buried under the silt by now, somewhere near her boat.
Therefore, she put her bare feet on the cold, packed floor of the sanctuary and carefully stood up.
The man’s coughing was growing worse. He had rolled over onto his side to try to stop the cycle, but to no avail.
He was sputtering and choking and when Leonore was halfway across the sanctuary floor, she noticed an earthen pitcher next to his bedside.
She didn’t know what was in it, but at this point, anything would help soothe that cough.
As she reached his cot, she knelt down and picked up the pitcher, bringing it to her nose for a quick sniff.
It smelled of onion. Reaching out, she put her hand on the man’s shoulder and tried to encourage him to sit up.
“Sede, sede,” she said softly. Sit up, sit up. “Oportet bibere.”
You must drink.
She was speaking Latin, the language of the church, because she assumed he would be able to understand her better.
No one knew her native tongue, so she spoke Latin in the hopes of communicating adequately.
Still coughing, the big man sat up and grabbed at the pitcher she was holding for him.
Putting it to his lips, he sucked down the liquid, trying to quiet the cough.
It worked enough that he was able to catch his breath, but his eyes were red and his chest rattly. He took a few deep breaths before looking at her. She smiled at him and encouraged him to drink more.
“Bibere,” she said softly.
Drink.
He did, again. He nearly drained the pitcher, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. The cough had abated for the most part and it gave him a moment to rest, which he did gratefully.
The man was exhausted.
“Gratias,” he finally said, realizing that a sick woman had gone out of her way to help him. “You have been helpful. I am appreciative.”
He spoke Latin to her because, like all knights, he’d had to learn the language during his training.
Since it was the official language of the Catholic Church, and knights were sworn to God by vocation, it was something they knew.
He’d been fairly oblivious to what was going on around him over the past three days, mostly sleeping and trying to manage his illness, but he was more lucid now.
He vaguely recalled the nuns attempts to speak with her, which was why he knew Latin was her language of choice.
“Mateo,” he said, putting his hand on his chest. “My name is Mateo.”
She smiled, a lovely gesture. “Leonore.”
Mateo smiled in return. “Are you feeling better, Leonore?”
She nodded. “I will be well soon.”
“Good,” he said. “My apologies, but I have been sleeping much of the past few days. I did not hear how you came here. Will you tell me? I am the one who carried you away from the river.”
He was speaking simply, using simple words, and using his hands to emphasize his meaning. But she understood him well enough and her smile faded.
“I was a hostage of the Ormsfolk,” she said. “I was given over to them by my father because there had been raids. People were killed. The Ormsfolk demanded satisfaction or they would kill my son, who had been captured during one of the raids.”
Mateo’s brow furrowed. “If he was captured, why were you a hostage?”
She shrugged. “Because my father valued my son more than me,” she said. “I was traded for his safe return.”
That was an unwelcome fate, but sadly, it was common. “I am sorry,” he said. “For you, for your son, for your father. What of your husband?”
“He is dead.”
“And your son is his heir?”
“He is.”
“Did the Ormsfolk know he was the new king, with your husband dead?”
“They did not.”
That made more sense now. “So your father gave you over to the Ormsfolk for the boy because he was more valuable,” he said. “But how did you come here? To these shores?”
Leonore sighed heavily and sat back on her heels, her smile completely gone.
“Because I was held in a cold stone tower, with no heat and hardly any food,” she said.
“Days and days of no hope, only desolation. I could no longer stand the torment, so I stole a boat and I left. The sea took me to these shores and my boat was broken on the rocks. And that is when you found me.”
His smile faded as well. “So I did,” he said. “I can only imagine that the Ormsfolk were terribly cruel to you. You have the right to survive.”
She nodded. “I am going home,” she said firmly. “My father is a man of his word, so he would not try to free me, but I was never told not to escape.”
“And you did,” Mateo said. “That was very brave.”
“Do you know of someone who could help me return home?”
“Where is home?”
“Jura.”
“Where is that?”
“An island to the north.”
“Off Scotland?”
“Aye,” she said. “It is to the west. Sometimes we will take a boat to Glasgow, which is closest.”
He understood the general area. “We are going north, to the Highlands,” he said. “Far to the north, past Invergarry, past Loch Ness. When we go, you can come with us, but I should tell you that we have seen signs of the Ormsfolk. They found your boat.”
All of the color drained from her face. He could see it. Her breath caught in her throat and tears instantly filled her eyes. “Nay,” she whispered. “Please… they have not. They cannot.”
He could see the terror in her expression. “I am afraid they have,” he said. “But you must not fear. The nuns here will protect you. And my friends… we are knights. We will help. We have sent for more men also.”
Leonore’s hands flew to her mouth in horror, perhaps in disbelief. When she blinked, tears spattered. Mateo reached out to take her hand.
“Do not fear,” he said in a surprising show of compassion. “I promise, we will help.”
“Please…” she whispered. Then, she swallowed hard and continued. “If I could only leave, I will go north. I do not need an escort. I did not mean for men to go to battle for me.”
Mateo indicated the sanctuary. “Not only men will go to battle for you,” he said. “This place is inhabited by warrior nuns and it is their duty to protect women. You are a woman, so they will protect you.”
Leonore only seemed to grow more frantic. “They cannot,” she said, standing up on quivering legs. “You do not understand. I have seen the Ormsfolk in battle.”
“Leaving will not—”
She cut him off. “They have brought prisoners into their village,” she said, growing agitated.
“I have seen them cut off hands and feet and arms and toss them into the ponds where the eels eat them. They leave their prisoners alive and cut off pieces of them, a little at a time, and toss it to the eels. If they find me here, they will do the same thing to me!”
Mateo stood up, albeit slowly. He was feeling weak and woozy. But he towered over Leonore as he reached out to grasp her wrist, trying to keep her calm.
“No one is going to cut you into pieces,” he said, his voice soft as he turned her around for her cot. “You will not worry. I will not let them take you prisoner again.”
She was trembling and weeping. “You cannot stop them,” she said. “If they want me, they will find me.”
“I can stop them.”
She dug her heels in, refusing to move, as she turned to face him. “Will you give me your word that you will not let them take me alive? You must put a sword in my belly before they can take me. Promise me.”
Now, Mateo was the one starting to feel horror. “I will give you my word that I will not let them take you hostage again,” he said. “You seem to have a poor opinion of my fighting skills.”
She shook her head, grasping both of his hands tightly.
“You have not seen what I have seen,” she wept.
“You have not listened to the cries of pain from prisoners left without feet, without hands. The Ormsfolk will cut something off and then leave them long enough to start healing and then cut off something more. The screams of men and women losing their legs haunt my dreams.”
Mateo sighed heavily. “You are ill, my lady,” he said. “Your mind is not thinking right. You must sleep.”
He was trying to push her into bed again, but it was like trying to move a tree. She was rooted where she stood, unwilling to move.
“They brought one man to the village, a warlord from an isle in Scotland,” she said.
“I do not know what made him special, but they had a particular torture for him. Little by little, they cut off his limbs and threw them to the eels. When they cut off his legs, the big bones, they had fire waiting, and they burned his flesh to seal it as soon as they chopped his leg off so he would not bleed to death. The smell of burning flesh is something I cannot get out of my nose. When there was nothing more to cut off from him, they cut off his ears. I heard someone say that they cut off his manhood, too. Then they put him in a dirt hole to die, with only his head left. He sang for eight days in that hole. I know this because I marked the days.”
Mateo couldn’t keep the disgust off his face. “What did he sing?”
Leonore broke down in tears. “Te Deum,” she whispered. “He sang to the glory of God for eight days before he sang no more. Then they threw dirt over him and buried him.”
As she wiped her face, Mateo envisioned a limbless man singing God’s praises as he waited to die. It was horrific. But it explained why Leonore was so terrified.
And why the fear of the Ormsfolk was well founded.
“Get back to your bed,” he told her, softly but firmly. “I must find the others. We will have a plan to repel the Ormsfolk, should they come. But you must sleep because if you are to help us fight back, you must be rested.”
She was being pushed closer to her bed, but she was still resisting. “I do not want to sleep,” she said. “I must leave before they come.”
“You cannot,” he said. “If you leave the safety of the walls, and they are nearby, they could capture you. That is not what you want.”
She hadn’t thought of that. After a moment’s deliberation, she shook her head. “It is not,” she said quietly.
“Then you must stay and let us protect you.”
There wasn’t much more she could say after that. She was shaken, exhausted, and ill. She let Mateo push her back to her bed, where she sat heavily before lying down.
Mateo stood back and watched.
When he was certain she wasn’t going to get up again, he turned back for his own cot, thinking to take a quick lie-down before going out and finding his friends and cousins.
Dawn was starting to break and a new day was upon them.
Clearly, something was going on that he hadn’t been part of, but he needed to be.
If the Ormsfolk were as bad as Leonore said, then he definitely needed to be part of whatever was being planned.
And he would be once he closed his eyes for a few moments.
Will you give me your word that you will not let them take me alive?
God help him… he hoped it didn’t come to that.