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“Worry has nothing to do with it. It would just be horrible.”
“You have no knowledge of that.” He turned on his heel and strode away from her, adding over his shoulder, “You were a virgin until last night. You are the ignorant one here.”
“You mean you have been with a woman who was having her monthly flux?”
“Certainly. There is sometimes no choice.” He shrugged, sending a remarkable shaft of pain through his shoulder. He felt a groan deep in his throat and managed to swallow it. Pain was lancing through his shoulder, trying to twist him in upon himself, but he wouldn’t let it. He wondered if he would even be able to take her now. Aye, better to wait. Tomorrow night, when he had more energy, when his shoulder wasn’t hurting like the Devil’s own tail, when he had enough lust to stiffen his rod, then he’d take her. He couldn’t imagine trying and fai
ling in such an effort. He would give himself tonight; he was not giving her a reprieve. He turned on his heel and left without another word.
She stood there, staring at the closed door, wondering at this man. She knew, deep down, that he would not have hestiated to humiliate her had the marten not climbed his leg to stare him down. She would prepare a special pork dish for Trist on the morrow. She knew that martens never ate all their food, but stored some away for lean times. She prayed she would never find a mess of rotted pork in some corner of the keep.
She wondered how badly his shoulder hurt him. She hoped it would hurt him a good deal during the night.
It was Graelam who awoke her when the sun was breaking over the horizon.
“Hastings, you must hurry. Severin has the fever.”
She merely nodded and rose. She had wished it on him but now, with the reality of it, she was afraid. She walked quickly to the wooden chest with its myriad drawers, each exquisitely sketched with the herb that was within. She said over her shoulder, “I will make an infusion of gentian.” She picked up a handful of a dark brown herb from one of the drawers and rose. “Go downstairs and have Margaret—she assists MacDear as much as he allows anyone to—boil some water. I’ll be along quickly enough.”
He nodded and left her bedchamber.
When Hastings came into the large bedchamber some minutes later, her old bedrobe wrapped around her shift, she paused, unable not to smile. The marten was seated on the pillow next to Severin’s head, his paw outstretched as if he would stroke his master’s face. He looked profoundly worried. He looked over at her and mewled softly in his throat.
“Don’t worry, Trist, your master will be all right. I truly believe he is too spiteful to sicken more.” At least she hoped he wouldn’t. If he died, she couldn’t begin to imagine what Graelam and the king would do. They’d probably deliver her up to a man more offensive than Severin. At least Severin was young and comely. “I’ve brewed it to the count of two hundred. Now I will strain it and he will drink it whilst it is hot.”
Graelam held Severin’s head as she slowly poured the liquid into his mouth. He was raging with fever, so hot that he’d flung the covers away from him, and the single blanket came only to his belly. He was quite naked.
She sat down beside him and continued the slow business of getting the potion down his throat.
When at least he’d drunk all of it, she said, “Now we must wipe him down with cold water. The Healer taught me that last year when one of the men-at-arms was ill.”
“Did he survive?”
She shook her head. “No, he was too ill of other things as well as the fever.”
Hastings wrung out the cold cloths and handed them to Graelam. When Graelam started to push the blanket to his feet, she said, “No, it is not necessary.”
“He’s big,” Graelam said after nearly an hour, standing up to stretch his back.
“Aye, nearly as big as you are. I hope for the sake of your wife that you never become fevered. Now, let me look at his wound.” She unwound the bandage. “This man is amazing. Look at the pink flesh. I have never seen such speed of healing.” She took dried bramble blossoms and laid them on the wound, then wrapped it again.
“Then why did he get the fever?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think anyone knows why it strikes some and not others. Mayhap it is his foul humor. He was very angry with me last night. He came to my chamber and made threats. Mayhap he’ll believe I cursed him and the result is the fever. Aye, I like the sound of that.”
“What do you mean he came to your chamber? He said naught to me of going to you again and we played chess in here until well after midnight.”
“Ah,” she said, and nothing more.
“You’re turning red, Hastings. What happened? What were his threats? Was he rough with you? Did he hurt you?”
“I think he wanted to but he didn’t. He left me alone after he raged at me. Aye, his own nastiness brought on the fever.”
The marten mewled, lifting its paw toward them.
Severin was shivering now, the burning heat turning into a wasteland of cold, freezing him from the inside. He felt the weight of blankets, so many of them, and they were but pressing him deeper into himself, into that frigid wasteland. He hated the weight of them but he didn’t have the strength to throw them off. He heard a strange noise, it was close, too close. He realized then that it was his own teeth chattering. He hated this, the helplessness, this endless Devil’s cold, but there was naught he could do because his mind spun away, leaving him awash in the misery and with no ability to control it.
Suddenly, he felt a spurt of warmth and turned his face into it. Trist was curled next to his head, his fur thick and soft, but he didn’t feel heavy, not like all those deadening blankets. His thoughts returned as the cold slowly lessened. He heard her voice and knew she was close. He felt her hands on him, easing the weight of the blankets off his shoulder. He didn’t want her hands on him. He didn’t want her to know that the blankets were grinding him into frozen pulp, making the pain in his shoulder unendurable. He didn’t want her to see him helpless.
