Chapter 17

17

R enn quickly crossed the room and as gently as he would lift a babe, took the frail old man up in his arms and carried him to the bed. When the hacking slowed to a dreadful gurgle, and it was clear Sabinius had sunk into a state of semi-consciousness, the knight turned to Ellyn for advice.

"What can be done for him?"

She looked helplessly from Rennwick to the ghostly pale figure on the bed.

"You said you had some skill as a healer." He placed his hands on her shoulders and squeezed until she looked up and focussed only on his face. "What can we do to help?"

"His chest is full, it must be eased." She touched trembling fingertips to her temple and tried to clear her thoughts. "We need pots of boiling water to set over the fire. And camphor if you can find some; the vapors will help him breathe."

"Easily done. What else?"

She chewed her lip and glanced at the bed. "Do you suppose there is an apothecary in the castle? "

"There are barely enough servants to cook the meals, but I will ask."

She nodded. "At the very least there must be an herb garden of sorts. Pennyroyal, vervain, rosemary—any of those will help if you cannot find camphor. While you search, have someone bring me honey and red wine. A mortar and pestle, and a small spot in which to brew a posset."

Renn's lips were moving, repeating the list as he headed for the door.

When he was gone, Ellyn pulled a quilted blanket over the old man. She laid a hand across his brow and was not surprised to feel heat, though whether it came from him having sat too close to the fire or from fever, she had no way of knowing. She tucked the quilt around him and fetched his goblet of mead, but he was too weak to sip more than a mouthful before his head fell back onto the bolster.

Renn was back in short order carrying a large black cauldron of hot water. Steam was rising off the surface and some of the contents splashed over the edge as he hung it on an iron hook over the fire. The drops hissed as they splatted on the hot logs and she could smell camphor almost immediately, harsh and stinging to the back of the throat. The maid, Bethy, came into the chamber a few minutes later with another smaller iron pot of water and an arm full of linens.

"The girl tells me there is no apothecary and the gardens are sadly overgrown, but I have dispatched Terrowin and Roger to see what can be found. Is there aught else you need?"

"I thought perhaps Sabinius was warm from the fire, but his skin is dry and burning with fever."

Renn blew out a breath. "He told you his name. "

"You say that as if you wish he had not."

"No. No, it is good that you know. Good that he told you. It eases the pressure of the blade you constantly hold at my throat to do so."

"The blade is still there, sirrah, for he implied he was only obeying the instructions given by another."

"Another who values Sabinius's life as much as I do. We must do what we can to save him. He must not die."

Within the hour two more small iron pots joined the cauldron bubbling over the pyre of blazing logs. Some of the herbs the two knights had found in the kitchen and garden were useful only for spicing food and Ellyn quickly discarded them. But they had found sage and fennel and pennyroyal, which she put in the pot to steep with honey and red wine.

The camphor water was kept at a steady boil and the heat became stifling. She stripped off the fur-lined tabard in favor of a light shawl she found draped over a chair, but even that kept a sheen of sweat on her face. She stirred and tasted and added more of this and that to the posset she was brewing, but Sabinius was so near to being unconscious that Ellyn feared her efforts might be of no use. She bade Bethy to keep forcing spoonfuls through his lips, hoping that some of it trickled down his throat between splutters.

Through the rest of the night, there was little change. Ellyn left the room long enough to dress in something more substantial than a veil-thin chemise, then she returned to sit by the old man's bedside. Rennwick sat as silent as a statue in the shadows, only moving if Sabinius started coughing and needed support to keep from choking. After one such fit, the worried knight stared at a wide smear of blood on the kerchief and appealed to Ellyn.

"Is there nothing else we can do?"

Ellyn nibbled on her lower lip. Sabinius was barely breathing. His skin was the color of old wax. His eyes were sunk in deep dark hollows.

"I need to go and search the stores and gardens myself. Something useful may have been overlooked."

"Go. Bethy can show you the way. I will stay here and keep watch."

Ellyn took up an empty basket and the girls left the room. Bethy guided her through the gloomy corridors and out a rear exit to a row of adjoining buildings.

Since most of the cooking for the castle residents was done over open fire pits in the great hall, the outbuilding that housed the stone ovens was small and utilitarian. Apart from a large work table where bakers and butchers brought their wares to be trimmed and prepared before carrying them in to the hall, there was a larder that contained staples like flour and butter, cheese and spices. While Bethy gathered up the makings of a broth, Ellyn rummaged through bunches of dried, hanging herbs, some so old and neglected they crumbled in her hand when she tried to take them off the hooks.

The gardens were, as Rennwick warned, massively overgrown with weed but Ellyn managed to find horehound and hollyhock, fenugreek and lemon balm. She also found a small patch of angelica and smirked to herself, knowing the leaves were often woven into necklaces and worn to protect against witchcraft. Into her basket went a large bunch, for the stalks could be ground into a paste and mixed with other herbs for a poultice.

By the time they were ready to return to the sick room, her basket was full and Bethy carried a sack of meaty bones and root vegetables. The smell of the bones attracted the attention of two tall wolfhounds who followed the pair at a watchful distance.

Spreading all of their treasures out on a table, Ellyn set to work with the mortar and pestle, making a paste of fenugreek and hollyhock root crushed together with strong mustard seed, snails, and lard. This she spread on two sheets of linen, soaked them in vinegar, and folded the packets into poultices. With Bethy's help, she placed one poultice beneath Sabinius, pressed to the bare skin of his back, and the other over his chest.

The beef bones Bethy had found were put to the boil and seasoned with a handful of wild garlic. She added wine and salt and lemon balm hoping that if the fever broke and he improved enough to sip some of the broth, it would help bolster his strength. Until then, aside from continuing to gently urge spoonfuls of the posset between his lips, there was not much Ellyn could do. She sat beside the bed and periodically touched a hand to his brow but there was no change in the burning heat. He seemed, if anything, to be sinking deeper and deeper into a place from which there would be no return.

Renn had asked her not to let him die, but she had reasons of her own for keeping him alive. She wanted to know more. More about her family. More about who could possibly care enough about her fate to send Sabinius and the knights to find her.

Throughout the second day there was little change. Rennwick's mood grew bleaker and at one point he nearly took Bethy's head off when she asked if he wanted a meat pie. Evening fell again, bringing with it a stillness that was almost tangible.

Nearing midnight, Ellyn was startled out of a light doze when she felt a shadow hovering over her. She looked around, but Renn was seated in his corner, his elbows on his knees, his fingers buried in his hair, his head bent forward such that she could not tell if he was asleep or staring at the floor in thought. Apart from the fire, which had burned low, there was a solitary candle lit beside the bed, its flame drawing the attention of a moth. Bethy was asleep on a pallet near the fire. There was no one else in the room with them. No one that she could see, at any rate. Yet her skin was tingling and the little hairs on her forearms were rippling up and down.

Sabinius was lying so still, she might have thought him dead but for the labored wheezing and the shallow rise and fall of his chest.

Something… a draft perhaps… brushed past her cheek causing fine tendrils of hair to stir, almost as if a hand had been gently laid against it. She drew a breath and held it, afraid to move, to blink, to shatter the moment.

She felt it again, the soft rush of air but this time it seemed to engulf her whole body.

The crackling of the fire and the night-time sounds of the castle faded away to utter silence and Ellyn closed her eyes, overcome by a sense of something not there, yet present all around her. She focussed every sense inward and a stillness settled over her, heavy as water, light as a sweet summer breeze.

And she knew.

"Mama." The word left her mouth on the faintest of whispers, so quietly that Renn, with his hawk's ears, could not hear it .

Her head tilted to one side and felt the featherlike touch on her cheek again.

"I know I promised. And for all these years I have tried to keep that promise but now… here… there is no other way."

A full minute passed before the heaviness lifted and she was able to draw a deep, cleansing breath. She opened her eyes and the darkness of the room was filled with tiny, floating pinpoints of light.

She looked at Sabinius, then down at her hands, which were steady and so pale as to almost glow in the shadows.

Her lips moved again. They kept moving, making no sound, as she leaned forward and placed her hands gently on the old man's chest. She closed her eyes and an odd sensation of floating engulfed her as she began to recite the words… words she had heard so long ago in a dark mud and wattle hut as her mother cradled a stillborn babe in her arms.