It made sense but I was too far gone to appreciate it. ‘We can’t know for sure!’ I wept.
Jack’s arms tightened, and all at once I was pressed to his chest. I could hear the fast drumming of his heart. ‘You would know, Lassair,’ he whispered. I felt the touch of a kiss on the top of my head.
It’s funny how the body works. I’d been weary beyond measure, sick at heart and full of sorrow, but abruptly I was filled with something totally different.
I turned in his arms, raised my head and, putting my face up to his, kissed him. He tried to hold back – he muttered something but I didn’t listen – then, with a sort of sigh, he gave up the struggle.
I was no expert in love. Something happened that night between Jack Chevestrier and me, though, which I knew even then I would never forget, all the days of however long my life would be. I think I already knew he loved me, and there was something in his total absorption in me, his very evident wish for my joy, his care, his skill and the extraordinary, shared moment of ecstasy that we experienced, that informed me quietly how deep that love might go.
It sounded a very small note of warning.
I didn’t listen to that, either. I was far too wrapped up in him: in his beautiful, solid, strong and muscular body, in the vast relief of the warmth, comfort and safety I felt emanating out of him to enfold me.
Eventually we lay quietly, side by side in his bed. I was still in his arms – I was hugging him too, and I couldn’t let go of him – and my head was pillowed on his chest. He didn’t speak, and neither did I.
There were no words to say.
SIXTEEN
I woke alone. It was early – I could tell by the light – and the house was cold. Dragging a blanket off the bed, I wrapped myself in it and went into the main room. Jack wasn’t there, and the fire was out. Just for a second I thought, He’s gone. He regrets what happened last night and can’t face me. I won’t see him again.
Only for a second. This was Jack. He wasn’t that sort of man.
Hastily I washed and dressed, then set about building the fire. I put water on to boil and looked through Jack’s supplies till I found oats for porridge. Then I tidied the bed, leaving everything neat. I packed my own belongings back in my satchel. You wouldn’t have thought anyone but Jack had ever been there.
The food had been ready for only a short while when he came in. He looked at me – it was only a brief glance, but I read a great deal in it – then, the smile remaining on his face, said, ‘I thought you’d still be asleep. I’m sorry I wasn’t here when you woke – oh, good, is that porridge?’
He sat down beside me, reaching for the bowl I was holding out. His manner was so natural, so unstrained, that it was as if we’d shared a house and a bed for years.
‘I was worried and it woke me,’ he said between mouthfuls. ‘As soon as dawn broke, I went out to see Walter and the lads down in the tavern.’ He glanced at my bowl. ‘You’ve nearly finished, and so have I – as soon as we’re done, we need to go back there. Ginger’s suffered a very bad beating.’
‘What!’ I leapt up. ‘Why didn’t you say so straight away?’ I demanded, already gathering up my shawl and reaching for my satchel. ‘While we’ve been calmly eating, I could have been tending that poor man!’
Jack too was on his feet. ‘It hasn’t taken very long to consume a bowl of porridge,’ he said calmly. ‘We’ll be better able to help Ginger, and tackle whatever else this day throws at us, with food in our bellies.’
He was right.
As we hurried off through the deserted village and out on to the road, he told me briefly what had happened, and why he had been worried. ‘When Ginger and I did our second search of Osmund’s cell-’
‘When you found the key,’ I put in.
‘When we found the key, yes. I had the sense that someone was watching us, but we both had a good look round and didn’t spot anyone. I forgot about it, which I shouldn’t have done, and then I remembered it early this morning. I couldn’t suppress the thought that something was wrong, and that was why I went down to the tavern on the quay. Ginger was dumped on the doorstep only a short time before I got there.’
‘Do you think someone saw you coming out of Osmund’s cell with the key, and beat him up to make him reveal what it opened?’
‘They might have seen Ginger and me but they wouldn’t have seen the key,’ Jack said. ‘It was I who found it, and it was well concealed. He’d fixed it to the back of a small stone relief of the Madonna and Child that hung over the bed. I slipped it inside my tunic and didn’t tell Ginger about it.’
My mind leapt to understand. ‘So whoever beat up Ginger knew the key was there.’
Jack gave me a smile. ‘That’s what I think, too.’
‘And Ginger knew nothing about the key, so of course he wouldn’t know what it was for. Oh, no!’ The full horror of that struck me like a blow. ‘He couldn’t tell them what they wanted to know, so there was no way to stop the pain!’
I grabbed Jack’s hand and broke into a run.
Ginger lay on a low narrow cot in a little room at the back of the tavern, stripped to the waist. His face was bloody, he had two black eyes and, I thought at first glance, probably a broken nose. There were bruises all over the ribs on his left side. He was bleeding from cuts to both forearms and also from a deeper gash across his abdomen.
Walter crouched beside him, and the other men hovered anxiously in the doorway.
Walter looked up as we hurried into the foetid little room. ‘I’m right glad to see you,’ he said, eyes on mine. ‘I was going to send for his old mother, but the other lads said why add to his pains?’ One of the men gave a small laugh.
I knelt beside Ginger. He was unconscious. I felt all around his head, looking for the swelling that is often such an ominous warning sign. There were a couple of lumps, one on the left side of the crown, one just under the hairline above his right eye. Neither was very large, but I would watch them carefully. He was lucky – if anything about receiving such a violent beating could be called lucky – in that neither blow had landed on the temples. Edild told me that the area of skull there is the weakest part.
I ran my hands down to Ginger’s face. Swellings and cuts on the eyebrows, the nose definitely broken, the jaw, as far as I could tell, intact, although heavily bruised. I felt his shoulders, arms, ribs. Broken ribs, probably – the bruising was extensive – but, as with his nose, there wasn’t much to be done about that. The cuts on the forearms were fairly superficial, but his left wrist was broken, as was his little finger.
‘Is there any damage to his lower body?’ I asked.
‘Doesn’t look like it,’ Walter replied.
I checked anyway. I suspected someone had kneed poor Ginger in the testicles, which had probably hurt more than all the other injuries put together. Otherwise, below the waist he seemed undamaged.
I sat back, thinking what I needed. ‘Heat some water, please,’ I said, to nobody in particular.
‘Already being done,’ someone said.
‘I need splints and cloth for bandages,’ I went on. ‘Straight lengths of wood,’ I elaborated, ‘the length of a forearm.’ I reached for my satchel, mentally going through the contents. Everything else I needed, I had.
Ginger remained unconscious while I treated him, which was just as well since it took quite a lot of effort to straighten the bones in his wrist, and in the end Jack had to help me.
I hadn’t been aware of time passing, but the sun was shining halfway up the sky by the time I had finished. Somebody brought me a drink – it was a pretty, plump-faced young woman, and, from her cheerful banter with Walter’s men, I guessed she worked in the tavern.
‘Will he be all right?’ she asked, jerking her head towards Ginger. He was snoring now.