Page 5 of The Knight's Pledge
“Where is he?”Effie demanded.
To her dismay, Rolf Littlebrook glanced down at the motionless pile of rags on the stone.
“Did you need to render him unconscious in order to bring him?” The others moved aside deferentially as she stepped forward and then knelt at the side of Lucan Montague.
“That was a fortuitous coincidence, I fear,” Rolf sighed. “He’d outright refused before he fainted. He’s unwell, Effie. I thought perhaps Winnie…”
“He was fine two days ago,” she said curtly. His lashes were dark against his pale, chiseled cheekbone, like a crag from the Warren itself. His lips were bloodless and gray. Although the January cold still rolled off his clothes, Effie felt Lucan Montague’s forehead with her palm and found it fiery, and greasy with sweat. “He’s burningup with fever.”
Behind her, Gorman sounded incredulous. “You brought a sick man into theWarren, Rolf?”
“I don’t think ‘tis an illness, son,” Rolf corrected. “I believe his injury festers.”
Effie looked up quickly at Gorman’s father. “His foot?”
Rolf nodded.
“Dammit,” Effie muttered. And then, louder, “Dammit!” She rose to her feet, confronting Rolf. “He’s useless to us in this condition.”
“Perhaps Winnie—” Rolf began again.
“I don’t havetimefor this, Rolf!” Effie shouted, hearing her voice growing dangerously shrill, but panic was rising within her again, panic she had only just been holding at bay with the hope that Lucan Montague might aid them in some way. Now, she could not seem to hold back the floodtide of terror that was crashing and climbing against the banks of her mind as the one supposed to be George’s savior lay feeble at her feet.
“They havemy son! They haveGeorge!” she shrieked. “How am I toever think of—”
Her words were interrupted by thin, cool bands encircling and squeezing her upper arm. Effie whipped her head around to find the serene, wizened face of Winnie, her white, white hair frizzed around her head like dandelion fluff. Her pale gray eyes bored into Effie’s as she pulled Effie away from the form of Lucan Montague and knelt in her place.
The old woman tugged up her draping sleeves, revealing spotted, skeletal arms. Her long fingers with their short, round, shiny nails skimmed over Lucan Montague’s form, pressing his body here and there, laying her ear atop first his chest then his abdomen. She moved toward his feet on her knees and waggled squeezed-together fingers at his left boot, which had been obviously altered to accommodate his foot. Effie knew she should have felt some shame for being the cause of the injury, but she could not muster any sympathy for the man, lying here in the Warren’s safe cathedral while George Thomas was missing.
His arrival had done nothing more than delay them further. He should just hurry up and dieif he was wont.
As if the old woman had read her thoughts, Winnie looked up at her sharply.
Effie stared back. She didn’t care what Winnie thoughtof her, either.
That’s not true, her conscience warned, seeming to be of one mind with older woman.
Thankfully, Winnie sent her expressive gaze to Gorman, who flew to her side at once as the boot was painstakingly removed. Effie watched as Winnie’s withered hands motioned in the air, the fingers of her right hand tapping those on her left, then drawing a pair of circles on her palm. She brought her two fists together and then swiped her hand over her left forearm.
“Only one?” he queried.
The frizzy white head shook and Winnie held up two fingers. Then she patted her lips briefly and wrung her clasped hands in opposite directions.
Gorman gained his feet and disappeared into the rippling shadows along the perimeter of the cathedral, and Winnie seemed to forget him immediately as she withdrew her long, slender blade from the belt around her tiny midsection. She inserted the tip of the knife carefully into the top of the stained bandages wrapped past Lucan Montague’s ankle and painstakingly cut down toward his heel.
Winnie peeled back the sections of rough-woven flax cloth to reveal Montague’s swollen foot, crusted with dried blood and seepage from the black, ragged slit of a wound caused by Effie’s own arrow. The cut wept and was malodorous, even from where she stood. She recognized again that she should feel some remorse, but her heart felt frozen in her chest and all she could do was stare at the manon the ground.
Gorman returned then with one of the youths and, kneeling at Winnie’s side, they deposited the items she’d silently requested. The old woman took a rag and dipped it into the wooden bowl of steaming water and placed it, sopping, on top of Montague’s foot.
The man started with a harsh cry, causing all in the group who watched to flinch, but Lucan Montague did not rouse again, even as Winnie began to wipe at the injury. Effie noticed a painful lump forming in her throat and, when the old woman brought forth her slender blade again and carried it toward the swollen appendage, Effie felt the bile rising. She turned away from the scene and walked quickly from the cathedral, tucking the parchment into her belt and then breaking into a run as she reached the upward slanting corridor that led to the entrance.
The steep grade forced her strides to long lunges, and she at last reached the top with her hands on her knees, her head hanging down, her shuddering breaths not delivering enough air to her lungs as saliva pooled in the recesses of her jaws. She went down on her knees in the moonlight, already growing pale with the approaching dawn.
She looked through the bare branches of the forest, their rolling, winter-prickly canopy stretching away to the North West. This time last year—and the fourteen winters before—Effie could have stood in this spot and occasionally caught a glimmer of light from far away Darlyrede House. How many times she’d looked across this expanse with both hatred and hope in her heart, longing for the day when she would be avenged, when her mother and father would be avenged, and all the wrongs done to them and the people of Northumberland were righted. She slid her legs to the side to sit on one hip, cocking her right leg to wrap her armsabout her knee.
Now that horizon was dark; Darlyrede House was a ruin. And there was no hope left. No matter that her half-brother, Padraig Boyd, had returned to England—there was nothing for him to claim now. And the one thing Effie loved most in the world had been taken from her.
GeorgeThomas. George…
