AllFreeNovel
Share Us
He knew she had touched other men who were no better. He didn’t want her to ever have to do that again. He knew it had to hurt her to hear such perverted crimes confessed in detail. He feared to think what terrible memories haunted her and visited her dreams.
Richard forced his mind off it and looked at Bridget. “Why did you stay when the others ran off?”
She shrugged. “Some of them had children, and feared for them. I don’t fault them their fears, but we were always safe here. Silas has always been fair to me. I’ve been hurt other places, but never here. It wasn’t Silas’s fault that a crazy killer did this. Silas always respected our wishes when we said we wouldn’t see a man again.”
Richard felt his stomach tighten. “And you saw Drefan?”
“Sure. All the girls saw Drefan.”
“All the girls,” Richard repeated. He held a tight grip on his anger.
“Yeah. We all saw him. Except Rose. She never got a chance, ‘cause she…”
“So, Drefan didn’t have a… favorite?” Richard had been hoping that Drefan had confined himself to one woman he liked, and that maybe she would be one who was healthy, at least.
Bridget’s brow wrinkled up. “How can a healer have a favorite?”
“Well, I mean, was there one he preferred, or did he just take who was available?”
The woman stuck a finger into her mat of red hair and scratched her scalp.
“I think you got the wrong idea about Drefan, Lord Rahl. He never touched us… in that way. He only came here to do his healing.”
“He came here to heal?”
“Yeah,” Bridget said. Silas nodded his agreement. “Half the girls had something or other. Rashes and sores and such. Most people who sell herbs and cures don’t want to help our kind, so we just live with our ailments.
“Drefan told us how he wanted us to wash. He gave us herbs, and unguents to put on the sores. He came twice before, real late, after we was done, so as not to interfere with us earning a living. He checked on the girls’ children, too. Drefan was special kind with the children. One had a bad cough, and he got better after Drefan gave him something to take.
“He came checking on us early this morning. After he saw one of the girls, he went to Rose’s room, to check on her. That’s when he found her. He came flying out of her room after what he saw and was calling out”—she pointed at the floor at Richard’s feet—“between throwing up. We all rushed out in the hall and saw him there, on his knees, heaved his guts out right there.”
“So he didn’t come here to… to… and he never—”
Bridget guffawed. “I offered—no charge, since he helped me and all with what he gave me. He said that that wasn’t why he had come. He said he only wanted to help, that he was a healer.
“I offered, mind you, and I can be very persuasive”—she winked—“but he said no. He has a real handsome smile, he does. Just like yours, Lord Rahl.”
“Enter,” came the response to Richard’s knock.
Drefan was kneeling before his array of candles set about on the table against the wall. His head was bowed, and his hands were folded in supplication.
“I hope I’m not interrupting,” Richard said.
Drefan looked back over his shoulder and then stood. His eyes reminded Richard of Darken Rahl. Drefan had the same blue eyes, with the same indefinably odd, unsettling look in them. Richard couldn’t help being disquieted by them. It sometimes made him feel as if Darken Rahl himself were staring at him.
People who had lived in fear of Darken Rahl were probably terrified when they looked into Richard’s eyes, too.
“What are you doing?” Richard asked.
“Praying to the good spirits to watch over the soul of someone.”
“Whose soul?”
Drefan sighed. He looked tired and doleful.
“The soul of a woman no one cared about.”
“A woman named Rose?”
Drefan nodded. “How did you know about her?” He waved off his own question. “Forgive me—I wasn’t thinking. You’re the Lord Rahl. I expect you get reports of such things.”
“Yes, well, I do hear about things.” Richard spotted something new in the room. “I see you’ve taken to brightening up the decor.”
Drefan saw where Richard was looking, and went to the chair beside the bed. He returned with a small pillow. He ran his fingers lovingly over the rose embroidered on it.
“This was hers. They didn’t know where she came from, so Silas—he’s the man who runs the house—Silas insisted I take this for the small help I offer the women there. I won’t accept their money. If they had money to spare, they wouldn’t be doing what they do.”
Richard wasn’t an expert, but the embroidered rose looked to be done with care. “Do you think she made it?”
Drefan shrugged. “Silas didn’t know. Maybe she did. Maybe she saw it somewhere and bought it because it had a rose on it, like her name.”
He gently rubbed his thumb back and forth across the rose as he stared at it.
“Drefan, what are you doing going to… to places like that? There’s no shortage of people needing healing. We have soldiers here who were wounded down by the pit. There’s plenty for you to do. Why were you going to whorehouses?”
Drefan dragged a finger down the stem of green thread. “I’m seeing to the soldiers. I go on my own time, before people are up and need me.”
“But why go there at all?”
Drefan’s eyes welled with tears as he stared at the rose on the pillow.
“My mother was a whore,” he whispered. “I am the son of a whore. Some of those women have children. I could have been any one of them.
“Just like Rose, my mother took the wrong man to her bed. No one knew Rose. No one knew who she was, or where she came from. I don’t even know my own mother’s name—she wouldn’t tell the healers she left me with. Only that she was a whore.”
“Drefan, I’m sorry. That was a pretty stupid question.”
“No, it was a perfectly logical question. No one cares about those women, I mean cares about them as people. They get beaten bloody by the men who come to them. They catch terrible diseases. They’re scorned by other people.
“Herb sellers don’t want them coming into their shops—it gives them a reputation and then decent people won’t come around. Many of the things those women have, even I don’t know how to cure. They suffer sad, lingering deaths. Just for money. Some of them are drunks, and the men prostitute them and pay them with liquor. They’re drunk all the time and don’t know the difference.
“Some of them think they’ll find a rich man and be his mistress. They think they will please him and gain his favor. Like my mother. Instead, they have bastard children, like me.”
Richard was mentally wincing. He had been ready to believe that Drefan was an unfeeling opportunist.
“Well, if it makes you feel any better, I’m the son of that bastard, too.”
Drefan looked up and smiled. “I guess so. At least your mother loved you. Mine didn’t. She didn’t even leave me her name.”
“Don’t say that, Drefan. Your mother loved you. She took you to a place where you would be safe, didn’t she?”
He nodded. “And left me there with people she didn’t know.”
“But she left you because she had to, so that you would be safe. Can you imagine how that must have hurt her? Can you imagine how it must have broken her heart to leave you with strangers? She must have loved you a great deal to do that for you.”
Drefan smiled. “Wise words, my brother. With a mind like that, you might make something of yourself, someday.”
Richard returned the smile. “Sometimes, we have to do desperate things to save the ones we love. I have a grandfather who has great admiration for acts of desperation. I think, with your mother, I’m beginning to understand what he means.”
“Grandfather?”
“My mother’s father.” Richard idly stroked a finger along the raised g
old wire spelling out the word TRUTH on the hilt of his sword. “One of the greatest men I’ve ever had the honor of knowing. My mother died when I was young, and my father—the man I thought was my father—was often gone on his business as a trader. Zedd practically raised me. I guess I’m more Zedd than anyone else.”
Zedd had the gift. Richard had inherited the gift not only from Darken Rahl, but also from Zedd, from his mother’s side as well as his father’s. From both bloodlines. Richard found comfort in knowing that the gift of a good man flowed in his veins, and not just that of Darken Rahl.
“Is he still living?”
Richard looked away from Drefan’s blue, Darken Rahl eyes. “I believe he is. I don’t think anyone else does, but I do. Sometimes I feel like if I don’t believe, then he will be dead.”
Drefan laid a hand on Richard’s shoulder. “Then keep believing; you may be right. You’re fortunate to have a family. I know, because I don’t.”
“You do now, Drefan. You have a brother, at least, and soon a sister-in-law.”
“Thanks, Richard. That means a lot to me.”
“How about you? I hear you have half the women in the palace chasing after you. Any of them special?”
