“One strives to be current.” Her hands on his again, and a smell of wine as she pressed a goblet on him. “Drink.”
“And have you drug me?”
“Would have done it with the tisane, Sir Kit, had I mind.”
“Again you sir me, Rosemary. Or is your name Rue?” he said, but he drank. I twas black currant wine, or perhaps elderberry: sweeter than the grape, and more potent. He tasted herbs in it, and sandalwood and myrrh. “Yppocras.”
“To strengthen your blood. You were hurt. Stabbed and left for dead. And buried without a wake.”
“How badly?” He opened his left eye. “May I see a glass?”
The chamber was homely, despite rich furnishings that did not match the plainness of her gown or hairdressing. He judged it hers, though, by the dress laid across the clothespress and the comfortable way she moved about, barefoot over golden flagstones and heavy patterned carpets in place of rushes an enormous luxury. A cool breeze blew in, the shutters standing open to the night. It did not feel like May.
“We’ve no steel,” she answered. “But here.” From her belt she drew a silver blade, a dagger twice the length of his hand, polished like a looking glass. She held it up; he tilted his head to get the lamplight at a likely angle.
The right side of his face was seamed with dried blood, for all the lady’s bathing, and as ugly a cut as he’d seen laid bone plain from brow to a cheekbone almost lost in a welter of puffed flesh and purpling bruises.
“S’blood, I can see why they left me for dead.” He frowned when she flinched at the oath. “Pardon, my lady.” She might be mad, but she had been kind.
“It’s not the cursing. It’s the oath.”
“Your pardon in any matter,” he answered as prettily as he could. “For if I have your pardon, it cannot matter what fault enjoined it, and if I have not your pardon, then I shall have to facet my flaws to the light until you find one that sparkles prettily enough for forgiving.”
She snorted. “Not a knight indeed. Ferret-quick, she lifted the poignard in her hand. Before he could flinch, she slapped him hard with the flat on each shoulder, numbing his left arm from shoulder to wrist.
“There. That’s done it. I dub you Sir Christofer. I’d make you a Knight of the Table Round, but if my brother ever wakes I’d hear of it. So you’ll have to settle for Cornwall and Orkney and Gore. Twill serve?” She studied his face intently, birdlike.
“Twill serve.” He made as if to stand, sliding his legs over the edge of her bed. She’d left his breeches where they belonged, at least, but her frank appraisal as she drew the curtain aside pulled a blush across his cheeks and made his swollen face ache. With a smile like that, were I less hurt, I’d try my luck with her. No blushing maiden, this. “My lady?”
“It will scar, she replied,” as if he’d asked the whole question. “And badly. But a Queen’s Man’s the better for a few of those, earned with honor.”
He flinched again. ‘So much for any secrecy I might have been left. But I can’t fault her herbwifery. And at least she hasn’t mentioned blasphemy. Or sedition. Or sodomy.’ He wondered if she might be one of Queen Elizabeth’s rumored bastards. The longer he looked, the stronger the likeness grew.
“Will I keep the eye?”
“No,” she said flatly. “Not a chance. You could let it scar closed, but there’s less chance it will take a taint and kill you if you wash with clean boiled water and let it drain.”
“Oh.” He sat back against the bed, his bare feet flat on her carpeted floor.
“Sir Kit One-eye.”
She spiked him a frown, and he grinned in return, although it stung.
“Oh, Tom.” After everything It was an ache in his chest as if cold fingers closed over his heart, stopped his breath. He laughed past it. “Could have been Kit-in-his-Coffin, though.”
“By the breadth of a finger. Finish your wine. When you re dressed, if you can walk, you’ll see the Queen.”
The Queen, he thought, and breathed out in relief as he raised the cup.
Morgan showed him a white-painted wooden tub behind a screen, with flannels and cakes of scented soap attending steaming water. The screen was a delicate lacework of pale stone. “Soapstone,” she said when she saw him running curious fingers over it. “From the Orient. You have clever hands, Sir Christofer.” She caught one and studied it, then lifted direct gray eyes.
“How many have you killed with them?”
Despite the silver in her hair, her face was no older than his; her thumb traced circles on his palm. Every sentence from her lips was a fresh assault on his practiced masks, and he swayed between stepping forward and stepping back.
“More than I wanted.” His plain tone was its own surprise. “Fewer than I should. I must get a message to Walsingham.”
She touched his face lightly before letting her hand trail across his collarbone and the bruise her dagger had left.
“Your murderers know not that the corpse they planted was but glamourie, and gone by sunrise of the day following and in a year, who could find the grave? They buried you in a winding sheet, without a marking stone. They said you died blaspheming. Not the first knight to fall so.”
“I did? I remember Ingrim, the great oaf, slinging me about by a hand in my hair, and with a dagger in his other. And Poley and Skeres held me down.” There were other memories in that, old ones Kit wanted not, though they came up anyway on a spasm like bating wings. Then pain, and great blackness.
“Blaspheming? No truth in the accusation, but vilest contumely! I do attract it: my wit and good looks.” He touched his ruined face lightly, came away with gummy blood on his fingertips.
“Can you get a message to Walsingham?”
“Twas Walsingham’s men did this to you.”
Kit shook his head and regretted it.
“Sir Francis, not that book-chewing rat of a Thomas, who had the gall to call himself a friend to me.”
He wondered if she could hear the grief in his tone. From the way her head cocked, birdlike, she did.
“I must advise Sir Francis that I live.”
Sensation was returning to the right side of his face. It would have hurt less if it had been carved clean away.
“He’s dead himself, Kit. Hast the blow to thy head addled thee? Gone from thy Queen’s service these five years, and gone to his reward these three. However Queen’s spymasters are rewarded. Unjustly, if earth models heaven.”
She stepped away, leaving his flesh burning where her hand had pressed it.
So she doesn’t know all my secrets. Lacrima Christi. He let his breath trickle out, relieved and enflamed. The Privy Council, the Queen must have interceded, to bring me here and under care. At least I’ve the proof I give good service.
Morgan’s black braid flagged against her shoulder like a banner.
“You’ll want to scrub that wound with soap once you’re in the water.”
“Is that wise?”
Her hem whispered over stone as she vanished around the screen. “It’s all that could save you. If the wound goes bad so close to the brain, well, it’s not as if we can amputate. Soap will cleanse the wound. And hurt. Not so much as when I sew and poultice it. As I’ll have to if you want a neat, straight scar and not a mess of proud flesh.”
He winced at the thought, then unlaced his breeches and tested the water on his wrist.
“Do you care for a man in an eye patch, my lady?” No answer, but he thought he heard a chuckle. The water came to his chin and was hot enough to make his heart pound once he settled in. A deep ache spread across his back, thighs, and shoulders as tight muscles considered relaxation. He leaned against the carved headboard and stretched his toes to meet the foot.
“Scrub,” she reminded. He sighed and picked up the soap.
When he was half dressed again, she washed the cut with liquor until white, clean pain streamed tears down his face. But it throbbed less after, and his head felt cooler. The stitching was worse, for all she fed him brandy before. The needle scraped bone as she tugged his scalp together and sewed it tight; he whined like a kicked pup before she finished.