The boy wrenched his attention away from the hunting bird and thrust out his arm, his fist opening with what seemed to him to be a creaking of his fingers, the bright sun glancing off the gold in his palm in delirious flashes. Almost finished now . . .
All those gathered around Victor seemed to still. They leaned forward slightly to gaze at the coin offered to the monk and glanced at one another quizzically or with frowns.
Oh, no. Maybe it meant nothing after all. Maybe the woman had been right, and Simon had been sending her on a goose hunt to get her far away.
Victor himself reached out very slowly and retrieved the little metal disk with forefinger and thumb. He looked down at it thoughtfully for a moment before raising his eyes slightly to regard the boy once more. “Where did you get this, child?”
Tell him who you are and what has been done to you . . .
He swallowed down his fear again.
“My name is Christian Gerard. A man called Glayer Felsteppe killed my mother and I think my father might be dead, too. His name is General Constantine Gerard, and he is the earl of Chase. I know that it probably doesn’t make very much good sense to you, but I was told if I came here, you could help me.”
The abbot made a strange sound in his throat before he was pushed gently aside and a man with long hair stepped into his place and then squatted down before Christian. He reached out his arms, and when his sleeves rose, Christian saw that his skin was painted with spiraling black swirls. His eyes sparkled as he grasped Christian’s elbow with one hand and cupped the side of his face with the other.
“Christian?” the man asked, and his voice broke on the word. “Christian Gerard?”
Christian nodded, and the tightly winding spring of fear was somehow uncurling in his stomach. “Did you know my father?”
The man suddenly gave a huff of laughter and he smiled, even as a tear raced down his cheek. In the next moment, Christian found himself pulled into the man’s painted arms, held tightly against his chest. No one had embraced him since his mother had died, and even though the man was a stranger to him, Christian could feel the love and compassion coming from him like the warm glow of the sun above. It surrounded him, cushioned him, sank into him. Then the man pressed his lips to Christian’s cheek, which he knew had to be grubbier than his hands because he had no way of seeing when it should be cleaned.
Then he felt other hands touching his hair, his back and arms, and the light of the sun was blocked as he was taken into the somehow even brighter fold of these strange and beautiful people, all laughing and whispering his name.
“It’s all right,” the man holding him said. “It’s all right now—you’re safe. Thank God, thank God—it’s a miracle.” His arms tightened around him, rocking him slightly.
Christian curled his dirty fingers into the man’s clean tunic, buried his face in his neck, and at last sobbed like the child he was.
Chapter 7
Constantine rapped on the thick oratory door and waited, the charred smell of the collapsed corridor behind and above him causing his guts to twist; how could the woman beyond the door have tolerated it this long?
“Yes?” she called from the stone room beyond, and Constantine pushed open the door.
She was sitting on the narrow bench, but it appeared she’d just risen from a reclining position. He hadn’t meant to wake her. She had had color in her face since eating the fish he’d caught for them early that morning, but unfortunately, that color was a faint shade of green.
“Are you unwell, Lady Theodora?”
She pushed a hand through her hair, then shook at her skirts, avoiding his gaze as he came into the room and pushed the door closed behind him to shut out the burned, rotten stench.
“I fear it has been long since I’ve had appreciable sustenance,” she huffed on a laugh.
Constantine frowned, wondering if she had vomited what little she’d eaten that morning. He crossed the room and squatted near the hearth on the stone floor, making a show of straightening the firewood he’d brought.
“How long after you gave birth did you escape to Benningsgate?”
“I awoke from the draught they gave me in a carriage.” When Constantine looked up at Theodora, she elaborated. “The priest under Felsteppe’s thumb was to kill me. I suppose he experienced an attack of scruples, though, and instead thought to send me far away on a ship. I walked here on the Chatham road.”
“Alone?”
“There certainly wasn’t anyone I could trust enough to ask for assistance.”
Constantine stilled in making the small pile of fuel. The woman had given birth for the first time and walked miles afterward to take shelter at this deserted ruin. It was a wonder she hadn’t bled to death. He recalled her telling him her hair had been caked with blood.
But then, he also recalled that he was conversing with the woman who, by marrying the monster she had, had guaranteed Constantine’s exile from his own country.
He placed the last stick atop the pile and then turned, sitting back against the wall and looking at her with a sigh. “Does the priest know you still live?”
Theodora shrugged and hesitantly leaned her own back against the wall behind her. Constantine could tell she didn’t trust him, and that was fine. He didn’t trust her either.
