Read the book: «Maid Of Midnight»

Chapter One

It felt good to be mounted on Thunder again after the rough Channel crossing. Ranulf grimaced as he remembered the endless swells and how close he had come to the indignity of losing the contents of his stomach.

This was better. He took a deep breath of crisp spring air. The Norman countryside was lushly green. A pretty brown thrush burst suddenly out of a gorse bush just ahead of him.

Ranulf smiled. His grandmother Ellen had always said that her Normandy homeland was the loveliest place on earth, outside of Lyonsbridge. He’d visited here once before, coming home from the Crusades, but he’d been traveling with an army in chaos after the capture of King Richard. There had been little time to admire the scenery.

There would be little time this trip, either, he thought, his smile fading. He was not here for pleasure. He’d come to find Dragon. And he didn’t intend to return to the warmth and comfort of Lyonsbridge until he could ride there with Dragon at his side.

He knew that the others counted his younger brother as dead. Two long years had passed without word. His grandmother had secretly ordered the holy brothers to begin masses for Edmund’s soul. But Ranulf refused to believe that his brother, a fighter so fierce he’d earned the name Dragon-slayer, was dead. He would find him, no matter how long it took. He’d search every corner of this bloody continent, even if it meant riding all the way to Jerusalem.

He intended to start with an obscure little abbey called St. Gabriel.

Bridget clucked her tongue in reproof as Brother Francis presented her yet another habit with the hem shredded like cabbage.

“If you all insist on continuing your tinkerings, we’ll not have a garment left to clothe you,” she said, shaking her head.

Francis’s round cheeks dimpled. “Now that would be a sight if the bishop ever did get around to visiting us here. A bunch of naked monks, being ordered about by a girl.”

Bridget forced her face into a frown, but her eyes danced. “Careful, Brother Francis, lest you have to do penance for such talk.” The frown turned genuine. “Who says I order you about?”

The plump little monk looked as if he wanted to put an arm around her shoulders, but he stopped himself and said instead, “Ah, child, let’s call it directing, not ordering. And well you know that half the brotherhood would perish without you to care for us.”

Bridget smiled. “I’ll admit to wondering at times how you all managed before I came along.”

“The Lord sent you to us. ’Tis the only answer. We’ve pondered it these many years since the day—”

Bridget waited, but she knew that Brother Francis would speak no further about her mysterious appearance at the abbey years ago. It had been her home as long as she could remember, but even now that she was a woman grown, the monks refused to speak of how she had gotten there.

She had stopped asking. It was enough that the monks loved her and she them. Though she’d devoured the abbey books on life outside the secluded monastery, she was happy here. She enjoyed her overflowing garden, the bustle of the dining hall and the peaceful solitude of the monk’s walk.

“If ’twas the Lord who sent me, it must be because he could see just how hard the White Monks of St. Gabriel were on their clothes,” she said, holding up the shredded hem and smiling at Francis.

“Sometimes I think we put too much on you, Bridget. How one slender girl can do all the work of caring for forty careless old men…”

“Forty dear souls,” Bridget corrected. “Who first took care of me for many years, don’t forget.”

Francis looked doubtful. “It seems a burdensome life for a young woman.”

Bridget gave the merry laugh that had so brightened the dark monastery halls and the lives of its inhabitants. “If it’s a burden, then ’tis one of love,” she said. “I’m fully content here.”

Francis’s worried expression smoothed. “If Brother Ebert tears his gown again, I’ll see that he sews it himself,” he promised. “He’s so proud of his confounded bread slicer and I don’t know how many times it’s run amok.” He turned to leave, muttering as he went, “I don’t know what was wrong with pulling apart the bread hunk by hunk like we’ve always done.”

Bridget smiled fondly at the round, retreating form. She’d told Francis the truth. She was content. It was true that sometimes, just before she drifted off to sleep, she’d have visions of a world beyond St. Gabriel. By morning the dreams would be gone.

She smoothed her fingers over the rough fabric of the torn habit and stared into the kitchen fire. She had no intention of looking for such a world. The only way she would glimpse it within these walls was if it would come to her.

Ranulf’s initial thought was that another bird had shot out of the brush, this time knocking off the small leather helmet he was wearing. He hadn’t brought his full armor to France. The wars were over and he had no desire for more fighting.

Almost immediately he realized that it had been no bird that had hit him, but an arrow. Before he could so much as reach for the sword in his saddle scabbard, they were on him. Four, at least, maybe more.

He flailed about with his arms, which were hard as an ironsmith’s hammer. Even before the years of the Crusade, the three Brand brothers had honed their strength in friendly competition, always eager to match their mettle against their siblings.

With the sheer force of his blows, Ranulf knocked two of his assailants from their horses, but another, a big man dressed in a black breastplate and black metal wristlets, took their place. Ranulf’s gloved fist hit the black metal, sending a shock all the way back up his arm. The man brushed Ranulf’s arm away as though it were a noisome fly, then he turned in the saddle and lifted the weapon he held in his right hand.

The last thing Ranulf remembered was the sight of a wicked star mace and an arm encased in black wristlets descending toward his head, blotting out the bright Normandy sun.

“Brother Alois says we can’t risk having you tend the man, Bridget.” Francis’s expression was worried.

“Nonsense. He’s been out of his head, raving, for nigh on two days. The Holy Father himself could be nursing him and he’d not know the difference.” Bridget finished stirring the mug of herbal tea at the edge of the hearth and rose to her feet. “Don’t worry, Francis, if he starts to come around, I’ll scurry back into the shadows like a little spider.”

Francis’s smile was sympathetic. “You know that if anyone outside learned of your presence here, you’d not be allowed to stay with us.”

“Aye, I’m well aware of it.”

Bridget scooted around the bulky monk, making sure not to spill the tea. It was one of the rare days when the brothers’ overprotective ways irritated her. She was sure her dissatisfaction had something to do with the young man who lay unconscious in the monks’ sleeping quarters. She’d caught a glimpse of him when Brother Ebert and Brother Alois had first brought him in the previous day. They’d found him on the road on their way back from market day in Beauville.

“I’ll go with you,” Francis said, giving a little puff as he lifted himself from the kitchen bench.

“You’ll not,” Bridget replied firmly. “I can’t tend the patient and my stew at the same time. Just sit there and give it a stir every now and then.”

Francis looked doubtfully from the young woman to the bubbling kettle and back. “You won’t…touch the man, will you?”

Bridget rolled her eyes. “’Twould be quite a feat to feed tea to a senseless man without touching him, don’t you think?”

“I should go with you.”

“You should mind the stew. I’ll be back in a few minutes, and if those carrots are scorched to the bottom of the pot, I’m sending you to dig me some new ones.”

With a little sigh of relief, she ducked out the low door of the wooden kitchen and walked across the yard to the low brick dormitory that housed the Cistercian monks of St. Gabriel. When she was a child, growing up within the walls of the abbey, this building had been forbidden to her, but the practicality of her efficient housekeeping and sense of order had long since overcome the monks’ scruples about allowing her access to their bedchambers.

Nowadays she had the run of the entire abbey, and used both smiles and a firm hand to keep it operating with the precision of the water timepiece Brother Ebert had invented. She rarely had problems, since the monks adored her, but some of them were a little…absentminded was the kind word, she decided. So she made it part of her routine to give gentle reminders when it was time to feed the animals, tend the vegetables, remove the week’s baking from the oven, pour the tallow into molds before it boiled entirely away….

She smiled as she walked inside the building into the largest sleeping room. Around the walls were sixteen beds, lined up perfectly and with covers folded and neatly stacked on top of each cot. Before she’d taken charge, the monks had never had individual beds. The neatness had taken some doing, but it had now become routine.

Remembering her mission, she walked quickly through the other two sleeping rooms to the far end of the building where two individual chambers held single cots reserved for brothers who were ill. Bridget had often tended to sick brothers in the past, though she knew that her charges were never entirely comfortable with her ministrations.

They’d placed the stranger in the rear chamber. A single candle flickered on the stand next to his bed and more light filtered in from the small window at the far end of the room. For a moment, she stood in the doorway, studying him.

There had not been a new novice to enter the order at St. Gabriel in Bridget’s lifetime, which meant that the youngest of the brothers who had raised her was old enough to be her father. When the odd visitor had entered the abbey walls, the monks had always bustled her away into hiding before she could be seen. This was the first time, Bridget realized, that she had ever been in the same room with someone young. The man lying so still on the cot in front of her looked to be not much older than she herself.

His head was swathed in bandages and his face was stark white where it was not streaked with crusted blood. His eyes were closed, and appeared sunken in his skull. All in all, he was a rather gruesome sight, she decided, but fascinating for all that.

Brother Ebert and Brother Alois had found the man stripped of anything that could possibly identify him. He’d been beaten and left for dead. Such things happened in the outside world, Bridget knew, which was just one more reason why she should be content with her tranquil life behind the walls.

The tea was growing cold in her hands. She walked over to the bed and placed the mug on the candle stand. The stranger lay so still that for a moment she wondered if he was breathing. Then her eyes moved to his chest and she saw an almost imperceptible rise and fall. He wore a thin under-tunic that was stiff with dried blood. The sight of it, along with his bloody and battered face, gave her a shiver. Before anything else, the man could stand a good cleaning.

With sudden resolve, she spun around and marched back out through the monks’ chambers, across the yard and into the kitchen. A dozing Francis bolted upright in his seat.

“I’ve stirred it well, lass,” he said, the words thick.

Bridget paid him little attention. “Pray continue to do so, Francis. The fate of tonight’s supper is in your hands.”

Then she took an iron pot lifter from the wall and retrieved a kettle from the back of the fire.

Francis leaned forward. “What are you doing?”

“I need hot water.”

“For more tea?”

“Nay. I mean to bathe the man.”

Francis’s jaw dropped. “Bathe him?”

“Aye. He’s filthy with blood and dirt. How can we tend his wounds if we can’t even see them?”

“’Tis an outrageous plan, Bridget. For one thing, a bathing could finish what the brigands started. And for another…why, child, you can’t seriously be thinking of…” He stopped and clasped his hands together under the long sleeves of his habit.

Bridget spoke briskly as she wrapped her skirt around the handle of the kettle and started out of the room. “Just forget that I ever told you about it, Francis. And mind the carrots,” she called over her shoulder.

She was still smiling when she reached the sickroom. She couldn’t remember ever seeing quite the same look of consternation on Brother Francis’s kind face. It was wicked of her to enjoy it, but she’d had so little chance to do anything out of the ordinary, much less shocking, in her life here. This was an adventure, even if it only meant cleaning up a stranger who, from the look of him, was destined for the tiny graveyard behind the chapel.

The room’s candle had burned out in a puddle of tallow, but the late afternoon sun slanted through the tiny window, providing plenty of light. After a moment of hesitation, Bridget set her shoulders and walked over to the cot. She put the kettle on the floor and sank to her knees beside it, bringing her face only inches away from the sleeping man.

This close, she could see the stubble of whiskers along his square jaw. She had a sudden urge to know what they felt like, and, realizing that there was nothing to prevent her from doing so, she reached out a gentle finger and stroked his chin. The harsh prickle surprised her. She pulled back as though burned, then touched him once again, more slowly.

His sunken eyes were rimmed with thick black lashes. Tendrils of hair escaping from his head dressing were black as well. What color were his eyes? she wondered.

Giving herself a little shake, she took one of the rags she’d brought along, soaked it in the hot water and began to wash him. The dried blood was two days old, and she had to rub to remove it. Her patient moaned and shifted restlessly on the cot, but did not awaken.

She removed his bandage to reveal an open, oozing gash along the side of his head. After supper she’d return with one of her herb poultices, but for the moment, she wrapped him back up in a new dressing. She finished washing his face, then his neck. Clean of the dirt and blood, his countenance was undeniably handsome, in spite of the pallor.

She reached the collar of his tunic and stopped, uncertain. It should come off, she decided. Now that his face was clean, the blood-soaked garment looked horrific. She threw the rag into the water and rose to her feet. The most sensible thing to do would be to leave the disrobing to the brothers. She had no doubt she was strong enough for the task—her days of hard work had made her stronger than many of the monks. But she had some doubt about the propriety of such an action.

She stood watching the patient for a long time, hesitating. He’d settled back into his deathlike stupor. In truth, she told herself, ’twas no different than cleaning up the bloody calf one of the milk cows had birthed last week. Taking a deep breath, she pulled the blanket from the inert man and threw it to the floor. Beneath the waist-length tunic, he wore woolen hose. Bridget gave a little gasp. She’d seen paintings in her books, but the only men she’d seen in person had been the monks, clad in their billowy robes. This man’s legs bulged with sinewy strength. Between his legs were bulges of another sort.

At the pit of her stomach was a curious stirring.

She should definitely call the monks, she thought, even as she began to lift the man and strip the bloody tunic from his back. His naked chest was as hard and powerful as his thighs. Bridget swallowed, her mouth gone suddenly dry.

Without taking her eyes from the man’s body, she leaned over to rinse the bloody rag in the cooling water. She was staring, she knew, but who was there to see? Then, with an impish grin at her own boldness, she proceeded to give the mysterious stranger a thorough washing from chest to…toe.

Ranulf couldn’t understand why it was taking so long to cross the Channel. And why had they stuffed him into a barrel for the crossing so that he couldn’t look out at the sea and sky? He tried to lift a fist to pound on the lid and demand release, but, to his amazement, his arm wouldn’t move. Nothing would, for that matter.

Nothing was moving except the barrel, which made its regular up-and-down swoop with every new wave. Ranulf wanted to be sick, but even his stomach wouldn’t move. Nor his mouth. His eyes wouldn’t open, either. What had happened to him? he wondered in sudden panic.

The barrel surged again with the wave—up, up, then holding for an endless moment, then down. The movement sent a shaft of pain stabbing through his head. Jesu. What was wrong?

As the pain splintered light into his brain, the top of the barrel lifted and a beautiful, golden-haired woman peered in at him, smiling. He tried to call to her, but his throat closed around the words.

Darkness swirled, then she was there again—the golden angel. He made another desperate attempt to speak, but all he could produce was a moan of pain. His groan echoed off the sides of the barrel. As the sound grew louder and louder, the angel slammed the lid of the barrel shut on top of him, and everything went black.

Brother Alois, acting abbot of St. Gabriel, seemed to assume that it had been Brother Francis who had bathed the wounded man and dressed him in one of the monks’ own habits. Neither Bridget nor Francis bothered to correct him. But after her intimate session with the stranger the previous evening, Bridget had decided to let the monks take over the nursing. She’d spent one of her restless nights with visions of outside the walls. She dreamed that she’d accompanied the monks to market all the way to Rouen, walking freely beside them along the road, and that everyone they passed on the way looked like the handsome stranger lying in the monks’ quarters.

She woke up resolving to stay away from the visitor, and kept her resolve throughout the day until evening when Francis came to request her help. “You mentioned one of your poultices, child, and I think it might help, for the poor lad has surely got the blood poisons.”

She’d finished cleaning up from dinner and the monk had caught her leaving the kitchen, ready to retire to her little home next door to it. Long ago, the small brick building had been a brewery, and the faint, yeasty smell of ale still clung stubbornly to the masonry walls. But Bridget had lived there these past ten years or more, ever since the monks decided that she needed a place of her own with a sturdy door and proper latch.

It was not that they thought any member of their order capable of the unimaginable sin that those precautions suggested. But, Brother Alois had cautioned gravely, none of them had thought Bridget’s father capable of such a transgression, either.

Bridget looked remorseful. “I’d meant to put a poultice on last night, but then I…I was distracted, I fear.”

“Will you do it yet tonight or wait until the morrow?”

“It’d best be soon. I’ll just prepare the paste and go on over to him.”

Brother Francis looked up at the darkening sky. “I’ll wait and go back with you.”

“Nay, brother. You’ve been up tending him since well before dawn. Go on to your bed. It won’t take me but a few minutes to see to him, then I’ll be safely back to my house.”

After a moment’s more convincing, Francis turned to leave, and Bridget went back into the kitchen to prepare one of her medicinal poultices of marjoram and feverfew.

Bridget had begun to study the healing arts years ago after the death of one of her favorite monks from a relatively minor injury. She’d spent nearly a month closeted in the monastery library, and then had persuaded Brothers Ebert and Alois to purchase herbs on one of their market forays. Since then, she raised the plants in her own garden, and the health of the monks of St. Gabriel had flourished accordingly.

It was dark by the time she made her way over to the monks’ quarters. As she approached the building, she felt an odd excitement at seeing the stranger again. She slipped through the tiny back door that admitted her directly into the hall next to the wounded man’s chamber.

After Francis’s sober report, she was surprised at first to see that the patient looked better than he had the previous evening. But as she approached the bed, she saw that the improved appearance was due to a heightened color that was the ominous foreshadowing of seizures and death. She’d seen it before when wounds had become poisoned.

The gravity of the man’s condition banished all other thoughts from her head, and she barely glanced at the lean body she had washed with such avid curiosity the previous day. She sat beside him on the narrow cot and removed the head bandages.

As before, he groaned at her touch, but she steeled herself to ignore the sound, and applied the poultice, pressing gently to be sure that the healing herbs would reach every part of the wound.

Under her fingers his scalp was burning. The man meant nothing to her. Indeed, if he recovered, his presence at the abbey could prove to be dangerous to her very existence. But she found herself offering up a quick prayer to St. Bridget. It seemed too cruel that death would take someone so young and so strong.

He moaned again as she rewound the bandage tightly to hold the herbs in place. “You must fight, Sir Stranger,” she whispered. “Summon to battle the healing powers of your inner soul.”

At her words, the wounded man stirred, then opened startling blue eyes and looked directly at her.