Christian Ambrose Gerard.
How many times had Christian’s little fingers grasped this handle, awkwardly gaining the skill to feed himself? Hadn’t Constantine himself placed it in his very hand many times, helping adjust the boy’s grip, guide it to his mouth? He turned the blade toward himself and brought it closer to his eyes, examining the broken edge. The metal there was not sharp and raw but rounded and dull; this damage had occurred long ago. A result of play, perhaps? Likely Patrice had fitted him for a larger one as he grew any matter, and Christian had reserved this for his own boyish uses. Perhaps when he pretended at being a Templar knight, as Patrice’s last letter had relayed.
He is very proud of you, Constantine—his papa is a hero in his eyes. He looks for your return each day, as do I . . .
Constantine closed his fingers over the eating knife and looked back to the flames. The chill of his memories had banished the warmth of the crackling fire before him, and he hunched into himself on the little stool.
God help him, he was going mad. He had thought that perhaps being at Benningsgate would renew him, stoke the fire of revenge in his belly until it burned so furiously that it obliterated any thoughts beyond his eagerness to watch the life seep out of Glayer Felsteppe. But it seemed as though the opposite was happening; the despair he now felt was greater than any he’d experienced the night he first learned of the fire at Benningsgate. Holding this possession of Christian’s—the only one he now had—caused his heart to ache so that he wished he could reach into his chest and extract the thing, perhaps even toss it on the flames to be devoured.
Anything, anything to take away this pain. This guilt.
Please don’t go, Constantine; please! I swear to you, it will never happen again. I swear it! Please don’t leave us—we need you here.
A spluttering and hissing interrupted his reverie and he blinked away the watery, stinging memories to see the liquid in the metal cup bubbling and spitting through the narrow opening left by the cover. Constantine wound the forgotten rag around his hand and used the broken tip of Christian’s knife to lift the lid a bit and then turn and slide the cup itself farther from the heart of the fire. The boiling settled and the smell reached his nostrils.
It would be better if it had cooked for longer, but he didn’t think Theodora Rosemont’s condition warranted waiting.
He went again to the table, retrieving the cracked tankard and the meager amount of twine. Constantine cut a length of the hairy thread and wrapped it around the top of the tankard, looping it back on itself so that by pulling one end, the twine tightened and closed the crevice near the rim. He knotted it securely and examined it; it would have to do.
He took his supplies back to the fire and squatted by the hearth next to the tankard. First he slid the cup out of the coals and then lifted the lid away carefully and set it aside. Then he wrapped the rag around the cup and placed the blade along the rim, holding back the solid contents as he poured the steaming liquid into the tankard. Constantine set the tankard aside to cool while he added to the metal cup’s contents and then returned the new batch to the coals.
He rose, setting the blade and rag on the table before walking to the bench to stand over Theodora Rosemont’s sleeping form, the tankard in his right hand. He watched her for several moments, wondering if she was dreaming, what she was seeing. She was curled into herself tightly, as if she needed to defend herself even in her sleep.
Constantine knew that feeling well, and for a moment he thought how bad her life might have been since her father died. She was still so young....
He shook himself. Theodora Rosemont’s plight was no matter to him in the least. She was a means to an end, and her sorrow, her future, that of Glayer Felsteppe’schild—here he grimaced and cocked his head—would cause no rise of sympathy in him. He couldn’t allow it. Hewouldn’tallow it.
“Theodora,” he said, and his voice was gravelly, cracked. She did not stir. He cleared his throat. “Dori.”
Her eyelids fluttered open and she blinked, squinted up at him.
“Yes?” she whispered. “Is something the matter?”
Constantine looked down at the tankard in his hand.Damn it.
“Get up. Your broth is ready.”
Chapter 8
Tonight was the night he would kill himself.
Yes, he thought so. He had fasted nearly to the point of starvation during Lent, partaking of only bread and water once a day for more than forty days, so that his already long, gaunt face seemed that of a specter, the graying widow’s peak of his hairline retreating farther on his skull, his voluminous robes unable to conceal his thinness. He had prayed in every private moment—hours on the hard cold stones—to be delivered from the torment of his life, to have this demon excised from his soul. He had partaken of self-flagellation, holding in his mind’s eye the faces of the people he had harmed, betrayed, thrown to the abyss in order to do his dark tormentor’s unholy bidding as he cut his own flesh with the whips. He had prayed unceasingly for escape, for mercy.
But he had celebrated the risen Lord at Thurston Hold himself. There would be no escape for him, save that which he enacted himself. So be it.
Simon heard the chapel door creak open behind him and closed his eyes with a silent sigh, blocking out the sight of the crucifix he’d been concentrating on and closing the worn-thin prayer book between his palms.
It didn’t matter—God hadn’t been speaking to Simon any more than he’d been praying.
“Father?” the timid, watery voice called out. “Am I disturbing you?”
Eseld.
He turned his face only enough so that his voice would carry to the back of the room.
“No,” he lied, the word thick with mucus and the despair of the ocean of tears he’d not wept. He cleared his throat quietly. “What is your need?”
The door creaked again as the stooped nurse entered the chapel. She bobbed and made the sign of the cross in the direction of the altar, although she didn’t venture any further inside.
