Maid Of Midnight

Chapter Two

Bridget gasped and pulled backward, letting the bandage slip from her hands. Her first thought was to flee, but as the head dressing started to unravel, causing the poultice to slip, she realized that she would have to finish the job she’d come to do and worry about the consequences later.

He watched her with unblinking eyes. “Are you awake, then?” she asked, hesitating.

He didn’t answer. Perhaps the head wound had struck him dumb, she thought. Or perhaps he spoke no French. She repeated the question in Latin, with the same result.

As quickly as she could, she finished tying up the bandage, though it was unnerving to work on his head with his eyes open and staring. Even in the dim candlelight, their blue was intense.

“Do you understand me, sir?” she asked.

There was no movement of his dry lips.

Bridget sat for a moment. How ironic, she thought. These were the first words she had ever addressed to someone from outside the abbey, and they appeared to have no more impact than a milkweed hitting a pond. She shivered. Perhaps she’d been born as some kind of otherworldly sprite, destined to live within the monastery walls and be seen and heard only by the monks. She’d read of faeries, but she’d never before believed herself to be one.

Could he see her? she wondered. She waved a hand in front of the man’s eyes and was rewarded with a blink. She was, at least, not invisible.

Of course, it was just as well that he couldn’t understand her, but she couldn’t hold back a sense of disappointment. She was curious to know more about their visitor. Where had he come from? What had happened to him? She rose to her feet with a sigh. Now that he appeared to be regaining his senses, she would not be able to come here again.

“Angel,” he said, the word an almost unrecognizable whisper.

Bridget stopped and turned back to the bed. She’d finished her nursing and, if the man was talking, she should leave immediately. Instead, she walked back over to the cot and sank to her knees beside it. “Can you hear me?” she asked him.

“Bandits,” he rasped.

“Aye, you were set upon, evidently, and they’ve given you a nasty gash, but we’re taking care of you. I’ve treated you with some herbs.”

Beads of sweat stood out above his lips. He appeared to try to swallow, then said, “Thirsty.”

Bridget picked up a mug of tea that had been left on the floor and brought it to his lips. When it was apparent that he couldn’t lift his head, she slipped an arm behind his neck and lifted him against her chest so that she could help him drink.

“Not too much,” she cautioned.

He took another swallow, then sank back heavily against her arm. “Thank you, my angel.”

Bridget smiled. “I’m no angel, just a maid.” Her sudden fancy about being other than human had disappeared with this very human contact. The man could obviously see her and talk to her, and she to him. It was exhilarating.

There was an almost imperceptible shake of his head. “Angel,” he insisted, then he clutched her arm with surprisingly strong fingers and said, “Help me.”

His action startled her, but she answered, “Fear not, you’re in safe hands now, good sir. No one will hurt you here.”

“Help…find…Dragon,” he said. His eyes had gone a little wild, and a dangerous flush had come over his face.

He was looking for a dragon? Is that what he had said? Bridget bit her lips. She’d read about dragons, but she’d formed the opinion that such a creature may not truly exist. “You must rest and get well. Let the monks tend your wounds until you heal.”

“Diana,” he groaned.

Bridget was confused. Perhaps it was a woman he was looking for, not a dragon. But in any event, he didn’t have the strength to lift his head, much less go on a search. And this agitation could not be helping his cure. Perhaps she should brew him one of the sleeping teas she sometimes made for Brother Alois. “Can you not rest quiet?” she asked him. “’Tis the best thing for you now.”

Bridget couldn’t take her eyes from his striking features, which were full of anguish. He was so different from the monks. It wasn’t just his youth—there was a raw strength about him that she’d never seen among the peaceful brothers at St. Gabriel.

Suddenly the hand that held her sleeve pulled her toward him. Startled, she fell against his chest. His arm came around her and, before she could react, his mouth touched hers. “I’ll find him, Diana,” he whispered.

Bridget jumped backward, one hand flying to her lips. She opened her mouth to give an indignant protest, but stopped as she saw that the patient had slumped back on the cot, his eyes closed and his mouth sagging.

She gave his shoulder a tentative shake, but he didn’t respond. Her hands were shaking. She sat a moment, regaining her composure. He’d been out of his head, she assured herself. He’d obviously mistaken her for this woman, Diana. It had meant nothing.

But, nevertheless…she walked slowly from the tiny chamber and slipped out the back door into the cool night. The man had been delirious. He was a stranger, possibly even a malefactor. But nevertheless, she’d just had her first kiss.

“You were out of your head, my son. The mind plays tricks.” Brother Francis’s voice wavered slightly at the unaccustomed need for deceit.

“No, I swear, Brother. There was a woman in this room last night.” Ranulf struggled to sit up, and looked around the tiny cell. The idea was preposterous. The monk had explained that he was inside a monastery, being cared for by the brotherhood. Yet his visions of the lovely midnight angel had seemed so real.

His head swam with pain and he lay back against the hard straw pad. “I could have sworn she was real,” he said.

Francis smiled. “Mayhap ’twas a vision sent by the Lord to guide you through your extremity. None of us thought that you would survive such a wound.” He gestured to Ranulf’s bound head.

The waves of pain were receding. “I have to survive. I’m on a mission, and my family is depending on me to accomplish it.”

His family and others, as well. The image of Diana as he had last seen her, eyes flooded with tears, flashed through his head. He’d loved her as long as he could remember, but Diana’s heart had always belonged to Dragon. And Ranulf was determined to bring him back to her.

“From the looks of you, young man, it appears that your mission is a perilous one.”

“Nay, no one knows me here. I believe the brigands set on me by chance.”

“They were robbers, then?”

“What else?” Ranulf hesitated, trying to remember the scene. It seemed far away and unclear. He continued slowly, “Though I believe they were too well mounted and outfitted to be common thieves. The man who struck me wore armor as fine as any I’ve seen.”

Francis gave a little shudder. “There are still outlaw knights in this land. ’Tis a sad remnant of the holy effort to free the blessed sites of Christendom from the heathen.”

His attempt to recollect the incident on the road was making Ranulf feel sick. His earlier visions of the golden-haired angel were much more pleasant, but although they’d seemed as real as the feel of the mattress straw prickling his neck, they had evidently been conjured up by his delirium. “So no woman has been tending me?” he asked with a little sigh.

The monk seemed to scrunch up his face. Then he made a quick sign of the cross and said loudly, “No. There’s no woman at St. Gabriel Abbey.”

It was just as well, Ranulf mused as the round little monk stood and bustled out of the room. In his dream, Ranulf remembered kissing her—his angel-vision. He’d been confused for a moment, thinking that he was with Diana again, taking his leave, promising her to find Dragon. Ranulf closed his eyes, remembering. His angel may have been a phantom, but the petal-soft touch of her lips still lingered on his mouth.

Most of the buildings at St. Gabriel were made of fieldstone, with roofs neatly thatched by the brothers’ own hands. They formed a tidy quadrangle broken on one end by the graveyard that stood next to the monastery church. Isolated as it was in the wooded hills nearly two hours’ walk from Beauville, the closest town, the church claimed no parishioners other than the brothers themselves, which suited them fine. That meant that they didn’t have to deal with a procession of priests sent by the local bishop to meddle in their routine.

It also meant that few visitors came to explore the abbey grounds and take note of the odd building nestled in the woods about a quarter of a mile to the west of the church. The monks called the building the work shed, though it was far larger than any structure that would normally fit that term. It was as tall as the bell tower of the church, and, other than the barn, which housed the abbey’s two mules, three milk cows and assorted other animals, it was the only building at St. Gabriel made entirely of wood.

Bridget avoided the work shed whenever possible. It was where the monks usually carried out their tinkerings, which was what the monks affectionately called their inventing efforts. One never knew what variety of odor or sound would be emanating from the ramshackle structure.

But when Francis failed to bring her a report on the progress of the patient, her curiosity made her seek the monk out at his afternoon labors.

Francis and Ebert had been spending an inordinate amount of time at the shed for the past fortnight. They’d traded their duties in the gardens with other monks so that they could continue work on their latest creation, which was a refinement of the water clock Ebert had invented.

She’d be the first to admit that the monks’ ingenuity had made life easier at the monastery. She now had a spit that turned the meat automatically, driven by a device in the wall of the fireplace that turned with the heat of the fire. Of course, before the scheme had been perfected, she’d seen the ruin of at least half a dozen perfectly good roasts.

Bridget shook her head as she approached the building and was greeted with a barrage of loud bangs. She opened one of the huge wooden double doors and peered inside. Ebert was bent over his clock, a contraption consisting of small cups fastened around the edges of a wheel. Ebert was tall and thin. Even stooped over, his head rose above Brother Francis.

As Bridget entered, the clanging from the far end of the shed stopped. It had come from near the monks’ special pride, a large furnace they had dubbed a blast fire because of the peculiar roar of the air through it and the force of the heat it generated.

Sometimes Bridget found herself drawn into the monks’ plans, in spite of a resolve to stay detached, but today she had other things on her mind. She walked directly over to Francis and asked, “How is the patient? Has the poultice helped his wound?”

Francis’s smile looked a little nervous. “It may have helped too well, child. He’s regained his senses and had questions this morning about being nursed by a woman. A golden angel, he called you.”

Bridget grinned. “I’ve always tried to tell you that I’m much holier than you give me credit for.”

“’Tis not a cause for mirth, Bridget. It could have been disastrous, but I think I’ve convinced him that you were but a fever dream.”

Bridget’s grin faded. A fever dream. That was all she could ever be to anyone from outside of these walls. “If the fever’s broken, he should have a new poultice,” she said.

Ebert had straightened up to his full height and towered over both his fellow monk and Bridget. “Francis is right, Bridget. You must not be seen by the stranger again.”

“Make up the poultice and I’ll take it to him,” Francis added.

Bridget felt an unaccustomed prickle of resentment. She had thought of little else but the wounded stranger all day long, and it seemed unfair that now that he had regained his senses she must hide herself away. “I should see the progress of the wound myself,” she argued. “It will tell me what herbs to add to his cure.”

Both monks regarded her gravely, shaking their heads. “There’s no way for you to see him, child,” Francis said gently. “I’ll give you a fair report.”

Bridget bit her lip. The monks at the far end of the shed were watching the conversation. Sometimes it was difficult to tell the brothers apart at a distance in their identical habits, but she could somehow always recognize Brother Cyril. He was not plump like Francis, nor tall like Ebert, but there was just something about him, the way he moved, his energy and determination. Whereas most of the order were relaxed and happy, Cyril always seemed to be moving impatiently from one task to another. Bridget suspected that much less work would get done at the abbey without Brother Cyril’s pushing.

Cyril and two other monks were working around the big furnace, but Bridget knew that including them in the debate would not help her cause. The monks were united in trying to protect her from the outside world.

“Is he of right mind?” she asked Francis. “Has he told you about himself?”

“Aye, he tells me his name is Ranulf.”

“’Tis a Saxon name.”

“Aye. He’s English.”

Bridget hid a little shiver of excitement. The man was not only from outside the walls of the abbey, he was from outside of Normandy itself. He had traveled the world, crossed the water. She had a fierce desire to talk with him. An hour or two in his company would no doubt teach her more than a month in the abbey library. It was impossible, of course. But at least she could see the man again.

“I’d like to check the wound myself,” she said. “I’ll wait until he’s in a sound sleep tonight, then I’ll just slip in and change the dressing. If I’m gentle, he shouldn’t wake.”

“’Tis a foolish risk to run for the sake of a stranger,” Ebert observed.

“The stranger is nonetheless one of God’s children, is he not, Brother Francis?” She appealed to the monk she knew to have the least resistance to her pleadings.

“Aye, but…”

“And therefore deserves no less care than the worthiest of saints. Is that not in the Rule?”

Though every waking minute of the Cistercian life was supposedly ordered by the sacred set of laws called the Rule, none of the monks of St. Gabriel were too well versed on exactly what the holy proclamation contained. Francis and Ebert exchanged a bewildered look, and Bridget seized her advantage.

“’Tis so, exactly,” she exclaimed. “I’ve read it myself, and as a dutiful, if unofficial, daughter of this abbey, it’s my place to abide by its teachings. I’ll go to the stranger tonight while he’s in a sound sleep. If he wakes up, he’ll think it’s his angel come to see him once again.”

“Child, we cannot—” Francis began.

“It’s settled, then,” Bridget interrupted, and before he could continue his argument, she spun around and skipped lightly out of the building.

Henri LeClerc, Baron of Darmaux and Mordin Castles, sat in his high-ceilinged receiving chamber at Darmaux and glared at the man in front of him as if he were some kind of bug that had crawled out from one of the cracks in the drafty stone wall.

“I didn’t tell you to kill the man, Guise,” he said. “I told you to find out why he was asking directions to St. Gabriel.”

Charles Guise, sheriff of Beauville, did not flinch at the baron’s scathing tones. “You were right, mi-lord. The man was obviously a fighter. He put up more resistance than we had anticipated and I thought it best to get rid of him at once.”

“You thought?” LeClerc stood and walked toward the sheriff until his odd violet eyes were only inches from Guise’s. “You’re not in my service to think, Guise. Now we have no idea what this English knight was doing here or how much he knew about the abbey.”

The sheriff met LeClerc’s gaze. “As I said, he was a warrior. We may not have been able to take him alive.”

“Five of you? Against an unarmed knight? Do I have nothing but mewling babes working for me?”

Spit from the baron’s vehement words flew into Guise’s face, but the sheriff appeared to take no notice. “I’m sorry milord is displeased,” he said.

LeClerc made a sound of exasperation and stalked back to his chair, sitting down heavily. “We should probably talk to our holy friend at the abbey to find out if he knows why the man was headed there.”

“It’s some time before our monthly meeting, and we’ve agreed not to approach him on the abbey grounds.”

“I don’t care how you manage it, just talk to him.”

“As you wish, milord.”

“What have you done with the body?”

For the first time, Guise looked uncomfortable. “It seems to have been…misplaced, milord.”

LeClerc’s eyes narrowed into two violet slits. “Misplaced,” he repeated slowly.

“Aye. After the skirmish, we rode away and by the time I had reconsidered the matter and sent some men back to dispose of him, the body was gone.”

All the fury had disappeared from the baron’s tone as he said in silky tones, “Which means, my dear sheriff, that you aren’t even sure that the man is dead.”

“Oh, he’s dead, all right. I can’t imagine a head hard enough to survive the blow I gave him.”

In the same deceptively soft voice, the baron continued, “I want this man found, Guise. Dead or alive.”

“Aye, milord,” the sheriff acknowledged with a bow.

“I suggest it be soon.”

Guise’s palms began to sweat. “Aye, milord,” he said again. Then the baron waved him out of the room.

It had been easier to daydream about another visit to the sick man than it was to carry it out, Bridget realized as she stood in the little hall outside Ranulf’s cell. What if he wasn’t asleep? What if he awoke and this time realized that she was no holy creature but a flesh-and-blood woman?

What if he mistook her for the unknown Diana once again and tried to repeat his kiss? The thought sent a rush of blood to her cheeks.

With the warm poultice cooling in her hands, she took a deep breath and stepped into the dark room. Her candle flickered a dim light over to the bed. Bridget gave a small sigh of relief as she saw that not only was the patient breathing in deep sleep, he was flushed with the night fever. Her ministrations could again be explained away in the morning as a dream.

She sat next to him on the bed. In spite of the fever, he looked better. The sunken shadows around his eyes were gone. She’d read that the Saxons were a fierce people. She’d wager this man could be fierce enough if pressed. She could read his strength in the broad line of his jaw and the power of his shoulders. Her gaze drifted to his full mouth. His lips on hers had not been fierce at all. They’d been tender and warm.

She straightened her shoulders. She had no business thinking about that kiss. Biting her own lip against the memory, she briskly began unwinding the bandage around his head. He moaned and half opened his eyes.

“Shh,” she whispered. “It’s all right. I’m here to help you get better.”

“Angel,” he rasped.

“Aye, ’tis your angel come to tend you once again. Close your eyes and sleep if you can.”

But his eyes opened wider. “You’re not Diana,” he said.

He’d got that much straight, at least. “Is Diana your wife?” she asked.

With obvious difficulty, he shook his head and whispered, “She’s to be…Dragon’s wife.”

“Nay, I’m not Diana. And there are no dragons here, sir, so you need have no fear. You’re safe inside the abbey and we’re going to see that you recover.”

“Angel,” he said again.

“I’ll be your angel, if you like,” she said. She pressed the poultice in place and made quick work of binding him up. He winced once but stayed still. When she had finished, she sat back and smiled at him. “It’s much better, though the fever rages yet.”

He reached up and grabbed her hand. “Who are you?” he asked.

The sudden clarity in his blue eyes unnerved her. “I thought we’d settled that,” she said. “Didn’t you say that I was your angel?”

His gaze moved slowly from her face to the place where her plain linen gown framed the soft skin of her neck and chest.

“Aye,” he answered slowly, his voice growing stronger with each word, “but I was mistaken. If heaven had angels such as you to offer, my beauty, men would be falling on their swords in droves just to reach there.”

All at once Bridget felt as if she were the one with a fever. Her cheeks flamed.

“There’s the proof of it,” Ranulf continued, gesturing weakly toward her face. “Angels can’t blush.”

The remark was so absurd that Bridget couldn’t help a tiny laugh. “How do you know that, sir? I don’t recall any such prohibition in the scriptures.”

“They’re holy creatures. They don’t suffer from such human frailties as embarrassment or—” he stopped to study her, his eyes growing even more intense “—or shyness. Which is it that tints those fair cheeks so prettily?”

These were not the ravings of a delirious man, Bridget realized, in spite of his fever flush. This man was as sane as she and totally aware of her presence. She stood in alarm, the discarded bandage falling heedlessly to the floor. “I pray you, sir, close your eyes and sleep. On the morn you will remember that an angel tended you this night, and if you remember anything else about our encounter, I would ask you to put it out of your mind.”

He reached for her hand. “Don’t go, please. Be my angel, then, and I won’t question you further, I promise. Just sit by me awhile longer and let me look at you.”

His grasp was weak, and she could have easily slipped her hand loose, but instead she let him pull her gently back down to the bed. “I must go,” she whispered. “You need rest.”

For the first time, she saw him grin, a boyish, engaging smile that made the breath catch in her throat. “Ah, fair maid, they say to look upon beauty can be a more powerful cure than any herbalist’s powder.”

Once again Bridget’s face flamed at the unaccustomed comment on her appearance. Her discomfiture made her answer sharply. “Who says such nonsense?”

“My grandmother Ellen, for one. And she’s been healing the good folk of Lyonsbridge for three score years.”

Each moment she continued talking to him compounded her risk, but her curiosity prickled. “Lyonsbridge? ’Tis your home?”

“Aye. It’s in England, but my grandmother is Norman. She grew up here in Normandy.”

Bridget tried to picture this Norman woman. What would it be like to travel to a strange land, to make a home there and raise a family? “Is your grandmother a healer?” she asked.

The man hesitated a moment, then said, “She tends her people as the lady of the estate.”

Bridget’s eyes widened. So this man who lay abandoned and helpless in their abbey was not an itinerant wanderer, but the grandson of a lord. That meant that there would no doubt be inquiries. If she and the monks didn’t get him well and send him on his way soon, people might come to St. Gabriel looking for him.

She pulled her hand away from his and stood. “You’ve talked too long, milord,” she said stiffly. “I must insist that you sleep.”

“I’m no lord, angel. My name is Ranulf Brand. And since we’ve established that you’re not one of the heavenly host, I’d like to know your name, as well.”