Chapter 13
Thirteen
When I arose later that morning, I scurried to the Douglases’ house to explain what had happened to the shepherd.
I asked if they would look after his sheep along with their own.
As Thomas had ever been a good friend to them, and they had a boy learning the shepherd’s trade, they readily agreed.
They even let me pick what herbs I needed from their garden, to help Thomas and for my personal use.
“Good morrow, Mairi Grieve’s daughter,” they said to me as I departed their home. “We hope to see you again soon.”
Mairi Grieve’s daughter. I embraced the title, though it was not really mine. Yet while I looked after the shepherd I felt as close to Mairi as if we were still working side by side.
I grew closer to Thomas as well.
I tried not to, at first. To see him as my charge and not my companion, a body that needed tending, nothing more.
’Twas a hale body and a young one, a body which insisted upon asking me so many questions and paying attention to the answers. A rare occurrence for a girl like me.
“Mairi Grieve taught ye this?” he asked, while I mixed ginger and goose grease together in a salve for his leg.
My face warmed as I stirred the paste. “No one else cared to listen. They had their own lives and their own plans—mayhap like Eamon heeded the priest too well when he called Mairi’s an unholy trade.
So yes, she taught me.” I brought my salve and a clean rag over and took a seat upon the shepherd’s bed.
“I am sure ’tis more than that,” he said, eyes glued upon me as I shoved up his trouser leg. Ugh, how swollen his leg was. “Ye’ve a keen memory and a gentle touch. Mairi knew what she was doing.”
I kept my eyes very intent on his wound, dipping my rag in and smoothing the salve all upon his tortured skin. Next would come the splints and a linen bandage, though leather wound tight and wet would do as well.
This I understand. This I know how to do. Like a simple mortal healer, that is all.
“Did ye learn nothing from your mother?” I asked.
Thomas leaned back and closed his eyes, relaxing into my ministrations. “Died with my birth. I know naught of her, save she was the baron’s maid, not even what she looked like, whether she was dark or fair.” He swallowed hard. “When I catch my reflection in the well, I only see him.”
Him. The baron. Neglectful father and distant lord. Poor Thomas. I considered him a moment: the storm-grey eyes, straight nose, that cleft in his chin. It’s a very nice face, I thought.
What came out was, “When I catch my reflection, I see no one at all.” And I don’t know who initiated it, but somehow our fingers found each other’s and intertwined.
Two cuckoo’s eggs had found their own nest.
’Tis where I am meant to be. Beside him. On this side of the Veil.
But I dared not say this aloud, lest the words catch like thistles in my throat.
While Thomas recovered, I kept his house tidy as I could. It helped that the cottage was small, without many furnishings and with only the two of us and the dog to mess it up. It did not help that Thomas himself was ever a distraction and did not want to lie in his bed all day.
At least, he did not want to lie there alone.
“You are not yet well enough for that, lewdster,” I would chide him, as he reached to untie my apron strings.
“Parts of me are.”
This was . . . on the mark. And parts of me blushed at this, while other parts grew eager. “Then you must tell those parts of you to be patient. I have work to do.” And mayhap you will want to find your pleasures elsewhere, once you are up and about. I hoped I was wrong about that.
I brought water from the well for us to bathe in, bucket after bucket to fill a small tub I had borrowed from the Douglases and placed before the hearth.
There wasn’t a time Thomas did not attempt to trick me into helping with his bathing, though he was quite capable of doing it on his own.
There wasn’t a time I was not tempted by it, either, for he was sculpted as Adonis, or Endymion who won over the moon.
I only wished I could be the goddess who swept him away.
And if you are? Not goddess, but Queen? I shook away the thought, not daring to entertain it for long.
Thomas stood before the hearth, cleaning himself off with the water I had fetched. His shirt was wet and see-through and clung to his broad chest and shoulders in a most arresting way. “I canna reach my . . .”
You are his healer, and he is not yet so recovered as he would wish. I rolled my eyes to tear them away from this distracting display.
“Well I know what you canna reach, Thomas Shepherd. And well I know you can reach it, too, for you have lo these twenty years, with me not here to help you, and it’s naught to do with where you’ve injured your leg.”
Surely Mairi Grieve did not suffer so much distraction from her customers as this!
Thomas stared into the distance, dropping his scrub cloth to the side.
“Nearly twenty-one years, now. Nine years since I was sent from the manor house, to look after myself.” There was a stillness to him then, different from his usual manner.
I wished to ask where he had gone, and whether I could come along.
“Thomas, I—” I did not finish. No words could make up for the years without a family, the boy who had had to do for himself, alone.
I wished I might steal away the sorrow from his eyes, wipe the worry from his brow, offer him what comfort he could find in my embrace.
If I could be certain this was not gratitude or pity that inclined his attentions towards me. If only—
Thomas splashed me with the bath water.
It hit, not as cold as might be this time of year, but not exactly warm, either. Thomas snickered at me, then tried to play innocent, limping noticeably, looking all around the cottage for someone else to blame. Unfortunately for him, Cullen was doing his business outside.
I put my hands on my hips. “You sure act like a wee bairn, for all those twenty-one years. And after I went to the trouble to fetch that water. Honestly, such behavior from a grown man.” I raised my chin, shaking my dripping arms before me as I staggered off to find a cloth to wipe up.
Thomas’s eyes widened and his mouth dropped open. “Bess, I am sorry. ’Tis only a jest, I know the waters are full of vapors, but I dinna mean . . .”
I glared at him harshly. Then I threw my balled-up rag into the tub of bath water, which splashed up and caught my shepherd in its spray. Thomas made bizarre fish faces, water dripping from his dark curls, and I giggled at the sight.
“Siren!” he cried out. “Ye mean to drown me now, do ye?” With a roar he grabbed me, pulling me against him while I giggled and thrashed in his arms. I grabbed the rag again and tried to squeeze it out over his head, but he caught my arm, and I was laughing too hard to put up an effective resistance.
He, in turn, attempted to knock me into the tub itself, and only managed to knock the darned thing over completely, sending a wave of water trailing over the dirt floor.
Cullen, done with his business outside, came running in to investigate all the hilarity, leapt into the muddy water, and splashed us both. He ran past my legs, and I stumbled into Thomas, who caught my shoulders, maintaining his balance despite his wounded leg.
“Mud,” I said, between heaving breaths. “The floor is all mud now.”
“I am fair dirtier than when I started,” Thomas agreed, looking at his legs, the linen bandages now soaked and soiled. I would have to replace them for him.
His brows lifted and his eyes were questioning. I fell into him, lightly, so as not to knock him off balance.
Our chests heaved from laughter, from exertion, from something else I could not put my finger on.
“Should we do something about it?” I breathed, caught as if I were in a faery ring, transfixed in wonder by the possibilities of what might happen next.
“Yes,” said Thomas. “I think we should.” And he moved in for a kiss.
That was not quite what I had in mind. It was delicious, for all that.
I breathed him. Tasted him. Knew him in a way I had never known anyone before.
His lips were soft, his stubble rough; his mortality was like a quivering mayfly but also like a coursing river that would flow for all time.
’Tis how mortals are to my kind, ephemeral yet enduring, for while they last but moments to our centuries, their heritage lives on.
In their flesh flows a brew irresistible to those of the fae, and I would savor it for as long as I could.
When we broke apart his eyelids were lowered, drowsy with pleasure, like one enchanted, bespelled.
Or was that me?
Every fiber of my being flickered like flame, hungry for more tinder, to consume and be consumed, until finally it was quenched.
“Thomas,” I said. “I think ye may be well enough for that business now.”
“Yes,” he whispered. “Oh, my Bess, are ye?”
I put a finger to his lips. “Do not call me by that name. Not now.” But I kissed him again and slid my hands inside his wet shirt.
He backed away, only to peel off his shirt entirely and toss it to the muddy floor, then he dived back in and began kissing me again.
Together we stumbled for the bed, nearly slipping in the mud, though I had a care for his injured leg.
We tangled with one another, and in the bed clothes, until at last, for the first time, he was inside me and I was around him.
My mortal self rejoiced, joining with a fit partner, and my lusty fae drank from the well of pleasure she had long been denied.
Suffice it to say, we were both distracted from cleaning up the bath, hanging our wet clothes in the sun to dry, or mopping up the spills. When at last we were spent, we fell asleep, taking a far gentler pleasure in the circle of one another’s arms.
Somehow, the next morning the mess was cleaned up anyway.
At first, I thought Thomas meant to surprise me with the unexpected tidying. Though if he did, he was a far better actor than I had supposed. He remained curled up on his bed, mouth open and dead to the world.
“Thomas!” I hissed.
He looked at me blearily, stretching his arms but not yet getting up, then glanced around the room. “My Bess,” he said in amazement. “You have been busy, have ye not? We left the place a right mess last night. I am surprised ye had the vigor to tidy it.”
I had not had the vigor to tidy it, and certainly not the stealth to then find my way back into his snug embrace. Nor would I make any claim I had, for fear my fae nature would cause the words to choke in my throat. I could only hold my tongue and let Thomas think what he might.
I stretched wide and went to stoke the fire upon the hearth. Thomas limped over to me as I prepared the porridge for our breakfast, came behind me and put his arms around my waist.
I patted his cheek with one hand and kept stirring.
“Last night,” he breathed in my ear. “Wood nymph, I had no idea that was in you.”
“Hmm.” I stirred the porridge. I had not either.
“You seem distracted this morning,” he observed. “What has you so preoccupied?”
I did not clean this cottage, I thought. Who did? “I simply wondered . . . at any time have you set out a dish of milk in this cottage, or left a crust of bread?”
Thomas laughed then. “For who? The mice? Besides, you have seen me eat. Did ye think there would be any leftovers?” He tucked his head in the crook of my neck and gave me a kiss.
Any other time, I would have returned his affections, would have liked to play, burnt porridge be damned. Instead, I told him, “Well, we shall do so now. It is good luck.” Which was not a bit untrue.
For it is always good fortune to feed the brownies in your home.
I didn’t come on purpose, and I didn’t come to stay.
I came to help Thomas, to be with my shepherd king while he recovered from his injuries. I was his protector, and carer, and I would do everything in my power to keep him safe.
And if some part of me chose this quiet life with a mortal I cared about, because she feared what she might face on the other side of the Veil, I tried my best to pay her no heed.
“Do not go to the forest again,” I pleaded with Thomas, nigh on every day. “If there is aught ye need—firewood, fruit, nuts—send me. I will go.”
“Send you?” Thomas’s eyes twinkled, and the corners of his mouth quirked up. “Sweet maid, what’s to prevent you from being seduced by some elfin swain you meet in the woods and spirited away?”
I had the chance while the Veil was thin, and I did not go. But I thought of Amadan Dubh and my breath caught in my throat. Was he in the forest, still? I had not seen him at Beltane, unless he was indeed the uncanny wolf . . .
Thomas thought he heard piping at first, and I had smelled the scent of musk and forest loam, something innocent gone corrupt and foul. Now let me look, and see if the Dark Fool bore my rountree brand across his cheek. That would reveal the truth.
Thomas cut off my train of thought. “Och, the sorts of beings which dwell in Carterhaugh!” He scrunched his face, making his fingers into claws. “Trows and redcaps and other creatures to wish ye ill, rar!” And he grabbed me by the shoulders, nuzzling behind my neck.
I swatted him away. You have attracted far worse. What wrong did ye do to my people, Thomas, to attract the attention of that monstrous wolf? Or, because the fae sense of time is so tricky, I must ask, What wrong have ye yet to do?
“Do ye remember meeting aught in Carterhaugh, Thomas?” I asked, keeping my tone light and casual. “On Beltane Eve, perhaps? The mind can play tricks on you, when the night is dark, and you are injured and afraid.”
The light of laughter fell from his eyes.
His handsome face grew sober, his brow knit in puzzlement.
“Nay,” he said simply. “I remember only a wolf who chased me, and that I hurt my leg. And, of course, the wood nymph who walked me home and saved me.” He grinned and kissed the side of my face. “The one I now owe my life.”
My heart clenched, and my mouth went dry as sand. He jested, but it came out as truth.
Yet by oak and ash, by the Seelie and Unseelie, the trooping and the solitary fae, woe betide my shepherd king if ever the debt came due.