“You ought to take more plain water as well,” Everilda noted. “As much as you can stomach. It’ll help flush the infection from your veins.”
Shrike arose to fill a mug at the copper taps before she even finished her explanation.
~
By the close of the first se’en-night since he’d awoken from chirurgy, Wren had his surfeit of convalescence.
The pain wearied him, true enough, but Everilda’s anodynes kept the worst of it at bay. What irritated him most of all was the sheer boredom.
While the events of last winter might not have always proved pleasant, they had at least kept him occupied. This winter had begun well enough; his first Winter Solstice as the Holly King exceeded his expectations, and he’d hoped the season would continue on in that vein. The white hart hunt had seemed promising from the outset.
Now, however, he couldn’t even venture out-of-doors to stroll with his Shrike through the wintry wood.
Wren missed those promenades more and more with every passing hour. Shimmering branches sheathed in ice, lacework frost creeping over the ground, the soft snow settling over the whole forest in a reverent silence, the frozen fog of his breath contrasted against the snug warmth of his fur-linedcloak wrapped ‘round him, crafted by his beloved’s hands and a scaled-down match for the very same one which hung about Shrike’s own shoulders, and Shrike’s arm entwined with his beneath.
And then he’d gone and done just about the most idiotic thing possible in the Wild Hunt, paid full price for it, and shackled himself to the nest within Blackthorn cottage for the foreseeable future.
He did walk several times a day. Technically. But to take the same circular route about the one-room cottage hour after hour and day after day had begun to try his patience and sanity alike. Each stroll passed but a quarter-hour, which seemed both too long and too short by Wren’s reckoning. Switching between sunwise and widdershins helped some, though not nearly enough. To have his Shrike beside him, with their arms entangled and Wren’s head against Shrike’s broad shoulder, helped a great deal more.
Indeed, Shrike had become the one bright spot in Wren’s cold and lonely doldrums. Wren had known him sweet and gentle before. Now, in his hour of need, Shrike had become exceeding tender. Not just in the way he held him as they slept, or how he cupped the back of Wren’s head as he fed him spoonfuls of broth, or how he held his hand and stroked his hair and murmured reassurance whilst Everilda peeled back his bloodied bandages to clean the wound. But likewise in his encouraging smiles and his evident joy whenever Wren opened his eyes anew after far-too-many hours asleep.
Wren spent most of the first few days sleeping. Whenever he awoke, Everilda had her instruments upon him and then commanded him out of bed to either take another turn around the hollow stump or sit on the work-bench to redress his wound—often both—and by the time these ordeals had finished he feltso exhausted that all he could do was crawl back into the nest and slumber again.
By the middle of the week, however, he returned to bed to find he retained strength enough to remain half-upright leaning against the pile of pillows. After a quiet moment or two in which sleep didn’t come to claim him, he asked Shrike if he might have his copy ofGawain and the Green Knightto read. Shrike dutifully brought it to him. But when Wren opened the book, he found the words blurred before him on the page, and he could not will his gaze to remain on a single line. He furrowed his brow in consternation. No doubt the laudanum was to blame.
“May I?” asked Shrike.
Wren rolled his head across the pillow to regard him. Shrike had his hand held out for the book. Wren gave it over—or rather, he gave a vague gesture with the book towards Shrike, and Shrike understood at once.
Gently accepting the book from Wren’s feeble grasp, Shrike turned to the first page and began to read aloud. The mellifluous rhythm of the poem itself, uttered in the low rumbling burr of his beloved, soothed all Wren’s irritation. He relaxed against his piled pillows and let his eyes rest upon Shrike’s face to watch his dark gaze travel across the page and his perfect lips sound out the syllables. Thus he spent a more pleasant afternoon than he’d known since his rescue from beneath the ice.
Wren had grown accustomed to the luxury of bathing whilst in Blackthorn. His wound reduced him once again to the stand-up wash. Or rather, the sit-down or lie-down wash, for he lacked the strength to stand under his own power. Here again Shrike came to his rescue.
For the first few days whilst the infection still raged within him and his flesh blazed with fever, Shrike sat by him and continually bathed his burning face with lavender water. Even as the fever ebbed and he felt just a touch warm rather thanboiling, Wren found he enjoyed the gentle ministrations. He liked less to have Everilda in the cottage watching them both in their intimacy. For the most part her gaze remained cast down in her gyrdel-book as she examined and added to her notes. Wren didn’t much like the idea of her writing about him, either, though he conceded it was probably necessary to track and plan his treatment.
Then, in about the middle of the week, the fever faded altogether. Everilda still made him drink the tincture of mould—against its return, she said, and Wren supposed he ought to follow her advice whether or not it made sense to him. But she no longer remained in the cottage at all hours. Instead she limited her appearances to dawn and dusk.
Which left Wren and his beloved blissfully alone together at last.
Everilda had washed Wren’s wound and its surrounding flesh whenever she refreshed the bandage. Anything further than that, however, Wren felt far more comfortable leaving in Shrike’s hands.
And what capable hands they were.
Even laying on the unyielding oak of the work-bench with naught but a roll of linen to shield him somehow proved soothing with Shrike lathering and rinsing his body. The heat of the hearth-fire, which Shrike had never allowed to go out since Wren awakened, kept the whole cottage so warm that no chill or draught touched his bare skin. The warm water sluicing the grime off his flesh felt almost as indulgent as a full bath in the hollow stump. And to have Shrike’s tender ministrations performing all filled Wren’s heart past brimming.
Three days without a morning shave had rendered Wren’s cheeks, jaw, and throat more than a touch bristled. Shrike had never plied a razor to his own face—at least, not that Wren had ever seen in the year they’d spent together. Yet Wren felt no fearwith the blade at his throat held in Shrike’s fingers. And with the same slow, methodical care that Shrike took to his leather-work, he shaved Wren’s face as smooth as glass.
While Wren didn’t mind bathing on the work-bench, however, it seemed to trouble Shrike. More specifically, the dark blotches left behind by Wren’s bleeding body. Whenever Shrike looked on Wren himself, he smiled. The smile faded into a grim line whenever his eye alighted on the irregular rusty blemishes.
The third time Shrike’s gaze fell on the stains only to jerk away with a shudder, Wren could no longer bear it in silence.
“Forgive me,” Wren blurted.
Shrike blinked at him, bewildered. “Whatever for?”
“For ruining your work-bench.”
Shrike stared at him.
