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When they stopped for their midday meal, Varian’s throat was swollen enough to make eating a torture. He drank raki instead, which made him sick to his stomach. By the time he climbed back onto his mount, his entire body was shaking.
Berat lay only five more miles ahead, five treacherously steep, downhill miles in a downpour. Grimly, Varian rode on, shivering one moment, burning up the next.
The hours passed like decades. He scarcely saw Berat. It was all haze. He heard voices, was aware the group had stopped, and halted his horse. He looked down, and the ground yawned miles below him, then swayed, treacherously.
An earthquake, he thought. Of course. Why not?
Someone cried his name. Esme’s voice. Varian turned his head, searching for her, and the world tipped sideways, then sank away and left him falling into the heavens.
Varian opened his eyes to a thick gray fog. He blinked but couldn’t focus. It must be a dream: a white mountain side, a rushing stream, and evergreens. No. The somber green was her eyes. They shouldn’t be so dark as this, not so afraid. Esme was never afraid.
“I’m sorry,” he said. Croaked. Was that horrible sound him?
“Aye, now you are sorry.” She laid her cool hand upon his brow. “Only because you are hot with fever and miserable. If you were not so sick, I would beat you.”
He smiled. It hurt. His lips were parched.
He felt himself sinking again. Esme brought her arm round his back and raised him, while she nudged cushions underneath to prop up his head. The room shifted dizzily, then slowly slid back into focus.
A moment later, the most ghastly aroma rose to his nostrils. Varian glanced down. A spoon. He groaned and turned his head into the pillow, then winced as a great claw squeezed his skull.
“It is not poison,” she said. “A broth, of garlic and chicken. Swallow it, or I shall call Petro and Mati to hold you down while I make you swallow it.”
“Yes, Esme,” he said meekly, as he turned back to accept the reeking spoonful. Yet he hated having her feed him, hated feeling helpless, like a child. Too often she made him feel like a child. Except when he held her in his arms. He couldn’t even lift them now.
“I’m not a child,” he said.
“When I am ill, I am a little baby,” she said, administering another dose. “Cross and impatient. Once, I threw a bowl of soup at my father’s head, then wept with vexation when he laughed.”
“I can’t imagine you ever being ill.”
“It was when they took the bullet from my leg, and I was made to lie abed for weeks. Two years ago.”
Varian closed his eyes briefly. He’d felt the scar upon her thigh that night…when his hands had explored nearly every part of her. He’d wanted to kiss it. He wished he’d been there two years ago to look after her. He wished she’d thrown the bowl at him. He couldn’t tell her. He couldn’t explain, even to himself.
“But you will try to be more cheerful,” she went on, “for I have good news. My cousin Percival is here, and he is well and eager to speak with you. Later, though. I told him you must rest.”
“Percival? Here?”
“Yes. Bajo found him, as I told you he would, and brought him here, to this very house, where Mustafa has taken very good care of him. But you must hurry and grow strong, for the boy has no one to talk to except me, and he makes my head ache.”
“I must hurry and get strong,” Varian said, “so that I can give him a birching.”
“Be quiet. Eat. I will tell you a story.”
He accepted another spoonful, then another, while she told him of her life. Her voice low and musical, she spoke of the years she’d lived in the north, near Shkodra. Another pasha ruled that area, and it was thought safer than Ali’s territories, which at the time were in bloody turmoil. There, in the harsh mountains, Esme said, the stern Canon of Lek prevailed, laws handed down over generations, from the time of the hero Skanderbeg in the fifteenth century. Blood feuds raged all over Albania, and violent revenge was a common response to injury. In the north, however, the rules were intricately defined and strictly carried out. It was a hard place for women, she told him, but the land was beautiful.
For five years she’d lived in the region of Shkodra, the longest her father had lingered anywhere. Not that he truly lingered. He left her with friends while he traveled the length and breadth of Ali’s domains, doing what he could to help bring order and persuade the fiercely independent tribes to unite. Before Shkodra, she’d spent two years in and around Berat. Before that, three in Gjirokastra, where her mother had died—though they continued to visit often afterward, because Esme’s grandparents lived there. Korge, Tepelena, Janina. But these she said she didn’t remember well. Janina not at all, for she’d been an infant. Jason had met her mother, a young widow, there. One of Ali’s spoils of war, she was given in reward to Jason for services rendered. She was the only woman Jason accepted from Ali. Her name was Liri.
Varian absently swallowed what must have been a cauldron of odiously pungent broth while he listened. It was not just that the tale of her life took his mind off his physical misery and the great claw tearing at his head. He listened because this was Esme’s life, what had made her what she was, and he was greedy to know. She had secrets. He wanted to learn them all.
At last she put the relentless spoon away. Varian breathed a sigh of relief.
“I am sorry you didn’t like it,” she said. “Yet I am glad you were brave enough to take it anyway. Now your body is filled with the strength to fight your illness.”
“My body is filled with garlic,” he said. “I reek of it.”
“Yes, it will sweat through your skin, taking the illness with it. Now you have only to sleep.”
“I’m not sleepy,” he said.
“I tell you this long, boring story of my life and you are not sleepy?” She peered at him. “But you are,” she said. “You blink and blink to keep your eyes open. Close them.” She stroked the tight place between his eyebrows.
“I want to look at you,” he said.
“There is no need to watch me. I shall not go away and make new trouble for you. Do not be anxious.”
But Varian was. He knew the fever and headache muddled his mind, but he was afraid to close his eyes, because he might wake and she’d be gone. Then how would he find her again?
All the same, there was no withstanding the gentle pulsing between his brows, no resisting the waves of cool peace streaming through the tight muscles of his face. The claw eased its grip and the world grew soft and thick as velvet, cool and dark. He felt himself slipping, but some part of his mind, sweeping down this sweet river, snagged on a recollection. Time…years…count them. Five years in Shkodra, two in…where? Another place. Other places. How many years? He couldn’t remember. His mind went dark and he sank.
Within three days, Lord Edenmont was recovering very well, yet Esme continued to nurse him diligently. He was not overly demanding. He took his medicine with a minimum of complaint and ate whatever she gave him. Otherwise, he slept, mostly. That left her little to do, yet she remained with him and kept her hands busy helping Mustafa’s mother, Eleni, by mending clothes, picking through beans, carding wool. Esme did not want any more private conversations with her cousin, and this was the only polite way to avoid them.
Often, Percival kept her company, but while Lord Edenmont slept, the lad had to sit quietly. He did this surprisingly well for a boy. Sometimes he’d take out a half dozen rocks from his leather pouch and study them, occasionally making notes on the paper Mustafa had given him. Most often, though, the boy would sit reading one of Mustafa’s books.
