Your man, he thought. I like that.
He felt Joanna’s cool hand on his head and then there were other small noises as she opened the leather pouch at her belt; he thought he heard that running water sound again. Presently something almost too chilly for comfort dripped on to his brow and then, pressing a little cup to his lips, Joanna whispered, ‘Drink this, Josse.’
He drank. It was cool and tasted of moss. Or herbs. Or something. It made him very sleepy. He let himself relax on to the short grass. Something soft was placed beneath his head and he thought he felt Joanna’s lips on his cheek in a tender kiss. This is all very pleasant, but I must sheathe my sword, he thought dreamily. The dew will fall and the blade should be covered. .
Then he fell asleep.
Chapter 22
Aware as if in a dream of Joanna helping him on to Horace’s back, Josse sat slumped in the saddle as she led the big horse along narrow forest tracks, twisting and turning this way and that, until at last they reached her hut in its secret clearing. He felt a sharp stab of pain in his head as she got him off Horace and inside the hut, where it was all she could do to make him drink an infusion that she hastily prepared from her stocks of herbs on the shelves in the hut.
He lay stretched out on the sleeping platform and she covered him with soft blankets. He tried to keep his eyes open — there was so much he needed to know — but sleep was overcoming him relentlessly.
‘It’s all right, dearest Josse,’ Joanna murmured.
‘But how-?’
‘No more questions till the morning,’ she said very firmly. Then she lay down beside him, curled up against him and, immeasurably comforted by her warmth and her presence, at last he surrendered.
He woke to the lovely sensation of having his forehead massaged with a feather touch by very small fingers. There was the sweet, sharp smell of lavender oil. Seeing his eyes open, his daughter said, ‘Does it still hurt, Josse?’
He was not entirely sure but he thought not. To test this out he raised his eyebrows and lowered them very quickly four or five times in quick succession, which amused Meggie so much that he did it several times more. Then she had to try, and in the resulting laughter one of them managed to upset the little dish of oil.
‘Sorry,’ he said to Joanna when presently she came into the hut. ‘Some of the oil got spilled.’
She sniffed. ‘It doesn’t matter. This hut always smells of some remedy or another and lavender is one of the better ones.’ She came up to stand in front of the sleeping platform. ‘You look better. How’s the head?’
‘It’s fine,’ he assured her. ‘Whatever you dosed me with last night has mended me.’
‘Just a pain killer,’ she said.
‘A strong one, and it made me sleep like the dead.’ She did not reply. ‘Were you, I wonder,’ he added softly, ‘hoping that it would also serve to confuse me, so that I could no longer tell what really happened late yesterday from the weird and unlikely things that cropped up in my dreams?’
Her dark eyes were steady on his. ‘Yes.’
‘It didn’t work,’ he told her. ‘I can still see that image of my sword swinging down in a blow that should have beheaded him, yet-’ No. Whatever had happened next had completely gone, if indeed it had ever been there in the first place. ‘And you with that lethal knife of yours, I could have sworn you cut the other man’s throat.’
‘Sssh!’ She put a warning finger to her lips and belatedly he remembered Meggie, sitting just behind him. He turned but she seemed absorbed in making a very neat plait from the fringed ends of one of the blankets.
‘Meggie, Josse and I are going outside for a while,’ Joanna said. ‘We won’t be long, then we’ll come back and I’ll prepare some food. I’ve put a pot of water over the hearth to boil and, because fire and hot water can hurt, you must stay up there where it’s safe, yes?’
‘Yes. Stay,’ the child agreed.
‘She’s very obedient,’ Josse said as he and Joanna walked slowly over to the far side of the clearing.
‘She’s very sensible,’ she replied. ‘When I tell her to do or not to do something, I try to explain why, and usually — not always — she accepts without too much complaint.’
Something within Josse protested at the thought of a child not yet three years old being sensible. ‘Does she never just play or be naughty?’ He could hear accusation in his voice.
Joanna smiled, not to be ruffled. ‘Oh, she does both of those.’
They had moved into the shade of a great oak tree. Birds sang in its dense green foliage and from near at hand came the rushing sounds of a stream. He said, ‘So, what happened? Did the Domina turn those two men to mist just as our weapons struck?’
He had intended sarcasm, but surprisingly she nodded. ‘Yes, sort of,’ she replied. ‘They had something to do with it too; the uninjured one is a very powerful man and his abilities far exceed those of his brother. Actually I think brother is not to be taken literally, only to imply that they are united in the clan. The men are, I believe, no more than distant cousins.’
As if, he thought, it made any difference. ‘So why didn’t the stronger one undertake the task of following us?’ he demanded. ‘For one thing, his greater power might have allowed him to realise the truth about what we found out at Barenton so that he wouldn’t have launched his attack on us. For another, maybe if it had been he who fought that — that whatever it was that came to our defence in the Broceliande, he might have emerged the victor.’
‘He might,’ she agreed. ‘They would indeed have been more evenly matched.’
Still she seemed serene, quite unfazed by his angry comments. With an exasperated sigh, he said, ‘Joanna, I don’t understand supernatural powers and I never will. But, since it seems that twice recently people wielding such powers have tried to kill me, I do think that you might at least try to explain.’
She smiled. ‘Of course. Yesterday the Long Men were angry because they thought people — you — were again violating the grave of their venerated ancestress. You weren’t,’ she added quickly, ‘but they didn’t know that. We — you and I — saw them and, recalling how the wounded one tried to attack us before, we defended ourselves, once the Domina had released what the Long Man had done to stop you drawing your sword.’
‘What did he do?’
‘Oh, that’s actually quite simple. You could have unsheathed it all along but he had put the thought into your mind that it was suddenly impossible.’
‘How could he possibly do that?’
‘Josse, it would take all of today and tomorrow to explain, let alone to tell you how to do it. Just take my word for it that putting thoughts into someone else’s head is quite easy when you know how.’
‘Can you do it?’
‘I can, yes, but I never do it to those I love.’
‘Oh.’ He could not for the moment think what else to say.
‘Where was I? Oh, yes. The Domina knew that the Long Men would not wish to harm us once they knew the true story. Once they knew that the information we brought home from the Broceliande supported the closure of Merlin’s Tomb and not the opposite, because what you were shown there in the forest of Armorica confirmed your belief that the tomb here was a fake. Also, once they knew that you went there yesterday to apologise to the ancestress for what had been done, even though it wasn’t your fault, and to try to make amends.’
‘I suggested to the Domina that I could start to fill in the grave,’ he recalled with a grin.
‘I can imagine her reaction. That was a task of great honour reserved for the dead woman’s own people. But you weren’t to know. The Domina knew she must stop our attack on the men because, once everyone knew the truth, there was no more need either for them to try to kill us or for us to defend ourselves and retaliate.’ She paused, then added quietly, ‘The Domina is more far-sighted than most people and she no doubt saw what would have happened had your sword and my knife found their mark. Two of the Long Men would have been slain in their own sacred grove and, even though they are nowadays few in number, still the repercussions would have been terrible.’