I think back to the first time I saw him, down in the field with the duchess and her party. “I am a friend of Ismae’s.”
“Ismae!” He tries to prop himself up on one elbow, then winces and eases back down on the table. “How do you know Ismae?”
I can feel his eyes upon me, assessing, weighing, but I concentrate very carefully on folding the square of soft linen around the boiled herbs. “We trained at the same convent.”
There is a moment of silence during which I think he will let the matter drop, but no. “If you are an assassin trained, why are you here tending me?”
Unable to help it, I twist my mouth into a bitter smile as I return to his side. “It is a question I have asked myself many times, you can be certain. My orders were to ensure you got safely to Rennes so that you could further serve the duchess.” I look up and meet his gaze. “So that part of my taunting was true.”
We stare into each other’s eyes for a long moment, before the knight gives a small nod—of understanding or forgiveness, I am not certain. “Well then.” He smiles, an utterly charming and devastating grin that makes me want to smile back at him. Instead, I lay the hot poultice on his thigh.
He sucks in his breath so hard I fear he has swallowed his tongue. His face grows red from the heat and the pain and the effort to not cry out. “I thought you said you were not here to kill me,” he finally says with a gasp.
“I am sorry,” I say. “It is the only way to draw out the poison so you will not die of blood fever.”
“Just warn me next time.”
“Very well, I am putting one on your shoulder now.”
He gasps out again, but it is not as forceful as before. Good. The wound is less tender, then, and will hopefully be that much quicker to heal. I glance back up at him to see how he is doing. “You should, by all rights, be dead from these wounds.”
A brief flash of white teeth. “A gift from Saint Camulos. We heal quickly.”
As the poultices draw the foul humors from his body, I turn my attention to his arm. “This must be cleaned,” I warn him. “Vigorously.”
My patient grimaces. “Do what you must so that I may have full use of the arm.”
The next hour is not a pleasant one. I lay a wet cloth on the cut to soften it, then replace the poultices with fresh ones. “Would you like some wine or spirits to ease the pain?” I ask, but he gives a sharp shake of his head.
When the scab is soft enough I take a cloth and begin gently sponging away the dirt and grime and old mud that cakes the wound.
“You never said how you know so much about treating injuries,” the knight says.
I glance up at him in annoyance. “Why have you not yet passed out from the pain?”
“I welcome pain; it lets me know I am alive.”
While I cannot help but admire his spirit, I remind myself that it is wasted effort to like someone who will likely die of his wounds anyway. “You are as mad as your reputation suggests.”
He grins. “You have heard of me?”
I roll my eyes. “I have heard of a madman who dons battle fever like most men don armor and charges out into the field killing nigh unto hundreds of souls.”
He settles more comfortably onto the blanket. “You have heard of me,” he says, the satisfaction thick in his voice. “Ow!”
“My pardon, but the gravel and mud is ground in deep.” I work in blessed silence for a while, marveling that a man so ugly can have such a charming grin. Annoyed that I am thinking of such things, I get up to fetch a knife. The wound is infected and will need to be drained.
“You still have not told me how you come to know so much about treating injuries.”
“You talk too much. Lie still and try to heal quickly, will you?” I say, returning to his side with the knife. “We have a long way to go and your condition will slow us down considerably. Indeed, we will likely be captured if you do not get better soon.”
The Beast of Waroch scowls, and I can feel the jailor studying me. I wonder how much he has pieced together from my visit to the dungeon with Julian. “Perhaps you are hiding something?”
Only the truth of who I am. “No, I just prefer to work in silence. However, since you insist—I was trained at the convent in small medicines such as this.”
Disbelief is plain on his face. “This is no small medicine.”
I lay the finely honed blade of my knife along the oozing scab. It parts easily, like a flower opening before the sun. “My brothers were knights as well. They often had injuries such as these that needed to be treated.”
“By their sister?” he asks between clenched teeth.
“We were close.” Also, my father did not keep a physician on staff, and my brothers were too embarrassed to seek out the surgeon of the men-at-arms for the beatings and lashing my father bestowed upon them. “However, now that I have answered your question—”
He snorts. “That was no answer.”
“—you must answer one of mine.” He looks at me cautiously. “Who is your pet gargoyle and how is Count d’Albret’s own jailor more loyal to you than to the count? For not only did he allow you to escape—he helped me.”
Of a sudden, all lightness and good humor disappears from Beast’s face. “Perhaps he did not wish to stay behind and accept d’Albret’s punishment.”
“Perhaps not,” I say, disappointed, for I know that is not the reason, or at least, it is only one part of it.
“What do you know of d’Albret?” Beast asks.
“More than I care to,” I mutter as I place another poultice on his arm to draw out the infection.
“You do well to fear him. Even for someone with your skills, it is not safe to be near the man.”
I fight the urge to laugh in his face for daring to warn me of the dangers d’Albret presents. “You need not worry. I know all about Count d’Albret. Stories circulated throughout his hall faster than the annual plague. Indeed, it was one of the old women’s favorite pastimes, terrorizing us with the tale of d’Albret’s first wife. Have you heard it?” I glance up, my eyes wide and innocent.
He gives a curt shake of his head.
“Oh, la, everyone knows the story of his first wife. Indeed, it has become legend, one told by beleaguered husbands and tired matrons when they wished their wives or young charges to be more pliant. ‘Did I ever tell you the story of Count d’Albret’s first wife, Jeanne?’ they would ask. ‘She thought to escape her wifely duties and fled to her family home, where she begged sanctuary with her brother. Well, her fool brother should have known better than to come between a man and his wife, but he had a soft heart and agreed to harbor her against the cruelty she claimed of her own husband.
“‘But that d’Albret,’ they’d say, often with admiration in their voice, ‘he let no man take what was rightfully his and certainly not some baron from Morbihan. He rode with a full battalion of men straight to the baron’s holding, where he burst through the gates and slaughtered every one of the men-at-arms as they scrambled for their weapons. He rode his horse right into the main hall and killed the baron at his table, and then d’Albret struck down his own wife even as she begged for mercy.’” As I tell the story, I feel those earlier tendrils of hope begin to wither. What was I thinking? There can be no escape from d’Albret. All I have done is delay the inevitable.
“To be certain his point was made,” I continue, “d’Albret killed the baron’s wife and two young sons and the newborn babe she nursed at her breast.” My heart twists painfully at the thought of that babe. “Wives usually did what their husbands asked of them after that tale was told.” I look up to see that Beast’s face is hard as stone. “So yes, I do know what d’Albret is capable of.”