Chapter Sixteen
Death
Lara
Sophie’s hip was troubling her, so
Lara put her to bed with extra blankets and a side table laden with
hot tea and a slice of apple pie before she set off for market day.
Pulling her mantle tighter around her shoulders in the early autumn
chill of the morning, she shook the reins to Honey’s harness and
started the trek to the village square, her wagon full of cheeses
and herbs and tinctures and soaps. Wolf loped alongside.
They passed Patience’s house, where
Willem was no doubt busy working on the many saddles the garrison’s
soldiers had ordered. He and his newly hired apprentice had been
elbow-deep in newly tanned hide when Lara checked on Patience and
the baby three days ago. Talon had shown up as well.
He’d brought a teething ring carved of
linden and sanded as smooth as one of his ivory game pieces for the
babe, and a horse in full armor for Wyatt. The boy had lit up at
sight of it. Lara had watched as Talon held Wilric, not clumsy and
afraid like so many men who weren’t fathers, but close and tender,
talking softly, smiling, then breathing in the scent of Wilric’s
downy head.
She tried not to dwell on the grin
that he gave when he’d caught her watching him, or the fact that
despite how comfortable he’d seemed with the babe, he’d sworn his
intent to never sire a child loudly and publicly more than once.
She blew her breath out and urged Honey on, thankful that her flux
had come and gone in the past week, that she and Talon had both
escaped a pregnancy.
Other than that day at Patience’s
house, she hadn’t spoken to him since he released her from being
lidi a nine days ago and had only seen him from a distance as he
rode the Black on his rounds of the valley. As she pulled her wagon
into the village square and set up her stall, she wondered if she’d
see him today at the market. She’d made extra batches of sandalwood
and rose soaps, just in case he did show and wanted to replenish
his supply. As well as a last-of-the-harvest strawberry pie, which
she kept hidden beneath the wagon seat with two apple
pies.
Well into the afternoon, Lara had sold
most of her goods and was considering leaving when she looked
across the square. Phillipe and Anglbert walked to each side of
Talon, herding him toward her stall like a recalcitrant bull into a
field full of nettles. Bemused, she bit down on her grin as he
stopped before her with his hands thrust deep into his pockets,
despite Wolf’s attempts to nose them out.
“Good day, Captain.
Anglbert… Phillipe.”
“It would’ve been a better
day,” Anglbert harumphed, “if a certain captain here hadn’t dragged
his feet so long and hard about coming in the first place.” He
looked over what was left of her goods. “You’re out of
pie.”
He sounded so forlorn Lara couldn’t
help but play it out a moment, splaying her hands and shrugging her
shoulders. Then she stepped over to the front of the wagon, reached
under the bench seat, and pulled out two apple pies. She handed
Anglbert and Phillipe a pie each, grinning as their noses were
instantly in the cheesecloth wraps. Then she pulled the strawberry
pie out and handed it to Talon. He reached for his purse, and Lara
laid her hand over his. “My gifts to the three of you. Free of
charge.”
“Ahhh.” Anglbert inhaled
another whiff of his pie. “You’re an angel, Lara. I always said she
was an angel,” he repeated to Talon and Phillipe, both of whom
looked surprised at his declaration.
“She bakes like an angel.”
Phillipe pulled the cheesecloth away from his pie and scooped a
fingerful of apple into his mouth. “Manna from heaven.”
They all looked to Talon, who managed
a terse, “Thank you.”
“Don’t mind him.” Phillipe
thumbed at the captain. “He’s been a man of few words and numerous
scowls lately.”
“He’s worse at night.”
Anglbert earned one of those scowls from Talon. “He drinks too much
wine and bites your head off whilst playing Shah because the wrong
person is sitting across the board from him. Perhaps you have a
tincture or potion for what’s ailing him?”
“I might,” Lara said.
Talon truly did look unwell. For such a normally robust man, his
cheeks were hollowed and there were dark circles under his eyes, as
if he hadn’t been sleeping well, and he was a man who could
normally sleep anywhere, anytime he had a mind to. “If I knew what
ails him.”
“There’s the rub,”
Phillipe said as Talon glowered at him. “For he will not tell us,
though I wager it’s the curse.”
“It’s the curse all
right,” Anglbert said with a somber shake of his grayed head. “The
wildcat eludes him still.”
“Does she?” Lara feigned
the ignorance that had blinded her for so long.
“I told him he must woo
her first.” Phillipe grinned. “Before he could ever hope to tame
her.”
Lara met Talon’s brooding gaze. “I am
sorry, Captain. I know of no potion for wooing wildcats.” She
turned from the disappointment in his eyes and pulled a vial of
valerian root from her store. “But if you drink a tea of this root
powder before bed, it will help you sleep. I warn you though, it’s
a bitter brew, you might want to sweeten it with honey.”
“It can be no more bitter
than what I swallow every night now,” he said, holding her hand
with the vial. “I’ve tasted the sweetest of honey and it is for
want of more that I sicken and pine.”
He pressed a kiss to her hand, then
took the vial and turned on his heels before striding away as Lara
stood dumbstruck. When at last she could think again, she turned to
Anglbert and Phillipe, who watched her with amused grins. Giving
them a scowl worthy of the captain’s, she turned her back to them
and loaded her cart for the return trip home.
She hadn’t made it more than half a
league from the village when Wolf stopped to sniff the air and
stare at the road behind them. Giving a wag of his tail, he took
off running toward Talon and his Black.
“Captain,” she greeted him
as he pulled the Black up beside her.
“Lara.”
They rode on in silence, glancing back
and forth at each other. Lara snorted. This was ridiculous. They’d
shared the same bedchamber for a month, and the same tent for a
month after that. She’d woken up from her nightmares cradled in his
arms more times than she could count. They’d made love. Surely,
they could find something to talk about. She glanced at the
telltale bulge of the vial she’d given him in his tunic
pocket.
“I hope the valerian helps
you sleep,” she said.
He patted his tunic pocket. “And you?
Have you been sleeping well? Or do your dreams still wake
you?”
“No.” Lara gave a relieved
sigh. “I’ve not had one since I returned to my home.”
“Good. I’m glad to hear
it.”
“I, ah, I don’t remember
if I, ah, if I ever thanked you, for helping me when they, ah…”
When she would awaken crying out and he would cradle her in his
arms and soothe her, whispering sweet and low in her
hair.
He gave a crooked grin. “You’re
welcome.”
Lara cleared her throat and tried to
think of something, anything else to talk about.
“Patience and Wilric are
both doing well,” she said, though they’d both seen them only three
days ago. “If the babe’s appetite is any indication, he’ll be a
strapping lad.”
Talon shifted on his saddle and
nodded. “It’s a good thing Willem is getting so many orders for
saddles then, with two growing boys to feed.”
Lara tilted her head as if changing
her view of him would explain this man who swore his disdain for
children, yet made toys for Wyatt and melted at the sight of
Wilric. Her musing led to other things that melted, like her
insides as she took in his hands holding the Black’s reins and
remembered the feel of them on her skin.
If he’d been cursed by her, then she’d
been cursed by him as well, for she couldn’t look at his lips
without tasting their bruising nectar, or at the broad expanse of
his chest without feeling his muscled heat beneath her fingers, the
narrowing of his hips without feeling them pressing against
hers.
She gave Honey’s harness a gentle
shake. “Sophie’s hip has been bothering her.” Talon urged the Black
into a trot as well. “I want to get home to her.”
“How bad is it?” he said
with genuine concern in his voice.
“It pains her enough she
can’t walk far on it for the first few days the cold sets in, until
the teas and poultices start working. In truth, the pain’s gotten
worse and comes earlier each year. Last winter we moved her bed
down next to the hearth fire and that seemed to help.”
“Tree and I can move it
down for you,” he offered. “Anytime you wish before winter sets
in.”
Before the garrison left Crossroads
Keep.
“Have you received orders
to join the king?”
“No, not yet.” His eyes
pierced hers. “I don’t expect them for another month or
two.”
Lara turned the wagon up the path to
her house and pulled Honey to a stop.
The door stood wide open.
“Sophie?” Lara dismounted
and went up to the house. An eerie silence greeted her, and with
her heart pounding a little harder in her chest, she ran past Talon
to the barn. Only Gaea and the goats grazed in the
corral.
“Sophie.” She bolted back
out into the middle of the yard. “Sophie.”
“Could she have gone
somewhere?” Talon tied the Black to the post in the yard and joined
her. “Maybe to tend a villager?”
“No, she couldn’t walk any
distance, and Gaea’s still here.” Lara tried to think, but all she
saw was Sophie’s face from her dreams, blanched and unseeing with
water swirling around her. Lara’s heart dropped to her feet. “The
river,” she whispered hoarsely. “She’s in the water in my
dreams.”
She turned for the river and managed
to take two steps before her legs gave out. Talon caught her before
she hit the ground and propped his shoulder under her arm, holding
her up as they walked to the dock, where they found Sophie’s staff
and the handle and shards of a broken water pitcher on the
planks.
Lara turned her face into Talon’s
shoulder, her entire body shaking as the image of Sophie tangled
amongst gnarled roots came to her from her dreams. “The old oak,”
she rasped. “She’s in the old oak.”
“Stay here. I’ll go
look.”
“No.” Lara lifted her head