When Troy had duties to attend to, he stayed with Mattie in that icy vault as she expended her grief. Since Gar couldn’t, he felt obligated to. For Mattie, it seemed like a horrible nightmare she was praying to wake up from. She didn’t even remember how she’d come back up to the master’s chamber where Gar was sleeping on the bed, only that she was suddenly there and she had left her brother behind in that freezing vault. Another look at Gar on their bed, his torso bound up and his skin pale with blood loss, and she burst into tears all over again. She managed to make it over into a corner in the servants’ alcove, huddle down, and weep inconsolably.
In the stillness of the chamber, it was a heartbreaking sound.
Winchester, who had been under the bed, came to her and lay down next to her as her grief found an outlet. Jordan tried to coax Mattie into coming out and sitting by Gar, but Mattie wasn’t ready to do that yet. She’d had two horrible shocks, one after the other, and she was coping with it the best way she could.
Unrestrained tears.
Jordan finally left her alone and simply let her cry it out.
That lasted for about six hours. Mattie wept until she could weep no more, now having to resign herself to a world her brother wasn’t in. Worse still, she had to tell her parents and she knew how it would destroy them. Especially her father. But she eventually came out of the alcove, apologized to Jordan for her weakness, and took a seat next to the bed where Gar was starting to show signs of a fever.
Since nearly the moment he was injured, Jordan and Scott had begun brewing something they called “rotten tea” that smelled awful but was said to kill the poison associated with wounds. It was made from the blue mold that grew on bread and then steeped with water to create a brew. At least, that was what Mattie had observed. The process seemed mysterious. All she really knew was that her trust was in Gar’s grandmother and uncle, and they seemed to know what they were doing when it came to healing her husband.
He was in the hands of experts.
Mattie’s duty was much simpler. It was her job to use cool water and rags to bathe Gar’s face and arms, trying to keep his temperature down. She worked diligently at it, only stopping when Jordan forced her to rest. But she couldn’t sleep, and neither could Winchester, and over the past day or so, the dog had taken to crawling into bed with Gar and lying by his side. Mattie would remove him, but somehow, he would find his way back up again. Finally, she simply left him, bathing her husband’s hot brow with cool water as Winchester lay next to Gar with his head on the man’s shoulder. He seemed to sense that something was terribly wrong and, truthfully, it gave Mattie comfort to have him there.
At least he wasn’t trying to bite Gar anymore.
She was grateful for small mercies.
Her now-placid dog reminded her of the breeches he’d destroyed and her attention would drift, every so often, to the patchwork breeches that were now hanging over the back of a chair. The entire right side of them had been stained with Gar’s blood, but at some point since Gar was injured, Jordan had given the breeches over to a laundress, who’d soaked them in icy water and then in vinegar to remove the bloodstain. They did something else to the stain to try to remove it, but even with all of that, the stain’s yellowish outline remained.
But so did the breeches.
No matter what Gar put them through, they were enduring.
Just like Mattie’s love for Gar.
She took such comfort in that bit of clothing. She’d once regretted making them, but no longer. Now, they signified something solid and important. As the hours passed and Gar seemed to linger in a fevered state, Mattie made sure those breeches were just where he could see them should he suddenly awaken and want to get out of bed. But… as the hours passed and Gar didn’t awaken, it was difficult not to feel despair.
Those breeches became a symbol of what had been.
She prayed they wouldn’t become a symbol of loss.
The third day after Gar’s injury, Mattie was sitting on the bed next to him, bathing his sticky forehead with cool water as Jordan slept in a nearby chair and Winchester lay across Gar’s feet. Mattie knew that men had arrived over the past couple of days, men with armies, more knights coming in and out of a castle that was under repair, but she didn’t pay any attention to what was going on. It didn’t matter as long as Gar remained as he was, drifting on a sea of limbo, between life and death. All Mattie cared about was bringing him into the shore where she was waiting.
She was willing to do anything to bring him back to her.
“There once was a lady fair,
With silver bells in her hair.
I knew her to have,
A luscious kiss… it drove me mad!
But she denied me… and I was so terribly sad!”
That was all she remembered of the song that Gar and some of the others had sung at their wedding, and she sang it off-key, but it was enough to bring Jordan out of a deep sleep. Her head came up, her eyes still half closed, as she recognized the tune of the naughty wedding song.
“God’s Bones, lass,” she said sleepily. “Dunna tell me he taught ye that song?”
Mattie looked over at her, grinning. “He did not exactly teach me,” she said. “But he sang it more than once at our wedding. I just remember a few words.”
“Good,” Jordan said flatly. “When he wakes, remind me tae beat him for singing that song in front of ye.”
Mattie laughed softly. “I did not mind,” she said, looking at Gar again. “I like to think that he sang it because he was happy. I was just trying to remind him of that.”
