Bridget couldn’t take her eyes from his striking features, which were full of anguish. He was so different from the monks. It wasn’t just his youth—there was a raw strength about him that she’d never seen among the peaceful brothers at St. Gabriel.
Suddenly the hand that held her sleeve pulled her toward him. Startled, she fell against his chest. His arm came around her and, before she could react, his mouth touched hers. “I’ll find him, Diana,” he whispered.
Bridget jumped backward, one hand flying to her lips. She opened her mouth to give an indignant protest, but stopped as she saw that the patient had slumped back on the cot, his eyes closed and his mouth sagging.
She gave his shoulder a tentative shake, but he didn’t respond. Her hands were shaking. She sat a moment, regaining her composure. He’d been out of his head, she assured herself. He’d obviously mistaken her for this woman, Diana. It had meant nothing.
But, nevertheless…she walked slowly from the tiny chamber and slipped out the back door into the cool night. The man had been delirious. He was a stranger, possibly even a malefactor. But nevertheless, she’d just had her first kiss.
“You were out of your head, my son. The mind plays tricks.” Brother Francis’s voice wavered slightly at the unaccustomed need for deceit.
“No, I swear, Brother. There was a woman in this room last night.” Ranulf struggled to sit up, and looked around the tiny cell. The idea was preposterous. The monk had explained that he was inside a monastery, being cared for by the brotherhood. Yet his visions of the lovely midnight angel had seemed so real.
His head swam with pain and he lay back against the hard straw pad. “I could have sworn she was real,” he said.
Francis smiled. “Mayhap ’twas a vision sent by the Lord to guide you through your extremity. None of us thought that you would survive such a wound.” He gestured to Ranulf’s bound head.
The waves of pain were receding. “I have to survive. I’m on a mission, and my family is depending on me to accomplish it.”
His family and others, as well. The image of Diana as he had last seen her, eyes flooded with tears, flashed through his head. He’d loved her as long as he could remember, but Diana’s heart had always belonged to Dragon. And Ranulf was determined to bring him back to her.
“From the looks of you, young man, it appears that your mission is a perilous one.”
“Nay, no one knows me here. I believe the brigands set on me by chance.”
“They were robbers, then?”
“What else?” Ranulf hesitated, trying to remember the scene. It seemed far away and unclear. He continued slowly, “Though I believe they were too well mounted and outfitted to be common thieves. The man who struck me wore armor as fine as any I’ve seen.”
Francis gave a little shudder. “There are still outlaw knights in this land. ’Tis a sad remnant of the holy effort to free the blessed sites of Christendom from the heathen.”
His attempt to recollect the incident on the road was making Ranulf feel sick. His earlier visions of the golden-haired angel were much more pleasant, but although they’d seemed as real as the feel of the mattress straw prickling his neck, they had evidently been conjured up by his delirium. “So no woman has been tending me?” he asked with a little sigh.
The monk seemed to scrunch up his face. Then he made a quick sign of the cross and said loudly, “No. There’s no woman at St. Gabriel Abbey.”
It was just as well, Ranulf mused as the round little monk stood and bustled out of the room. In his dream, Ranulf remembered kissing her—his angel-vision. He’d been confused for a moment, thinking that he was with Diana again, taking his leave, promising her to find Dragon. Ranulf closed his eyes, remembering. His angel may have been a phantom, but the petal-soft touch of her lips still lingered on his mouth.
Most of the buildings at St. Gabriel were made of fieldstone, with roofs neatly thatched by the brothers’ own hands. They formed a tidy quadrangle broken on one end by the graveyard that stood next to the monastery church. Isolated as it was in the wooded hills nearly two hours’ walk from Beauville, the closest town, the church claimed no parishioners other than the brothers themselves, which suited them fine. That meant that they didn’t have to deal with a procession of priests sent by the local bishop to meddle in their routine.
It also meant that few visitors came to explore the abbey grounds and take note of the odd building nestled in the woods about a quarter of a mile to the west of the church. The monks called the building the work shed, though it was far larger than any structure that would normally fit that term. It was as tall as the bell tower of the church, and, other than the barn, which housed the abbey’s two mules, three milk cows and assorted other animals, it was the only building at St. Gabriel made entirely of wood.
Bridget avoided the work shed whenever possible. It was where the monks usually carried out their tinkerings, which was what the monks affectionately called their inventing efforts. One never knew what variety of odor or sound would be emanating from the ramshackle structure.
But when Francis failed to bring her a report on the progress of the patient, her curiosity made her seek the monk out at his afternoon labors.
Francis and Ebert had been spending an inordinate amount of time at the shed for the past fortnight. They’d traded their duties in the gardens with other monks so that they could continue work on their latest creation, which was a refinement of the water clock Ebert had invented.
She’d be the first to admit that the monks’ ingenuity had made life easier at the monastery. She now had a spit that turned the meat automatically, driven by a device in the wall of the fireplace that turned with the heat of the fire. Of course, before the scheme had been perfected, she’d seen the ruin of at least half a dozen perfectly good roasts.
Bridget shook her head as she approached the building and was greeted with a barrage of loud bangs. She opened one of the huge wooden double doors and peered inside. Ebert was bent over his clock, a contraption consisting of small cups fastened around the edges of a wheel. Ebert was tall and thin. Even stooped over, his head rose above Brother Francis.
As Bridget entered, the clanging from the far end of the shed stopped. It had come from near the monks’ special pride, a large furnace they had dubbed a blast fire because of the peculiar roar of the air through it and the force of the heat it generated.
Sometimes Bridget found herself drawn into the monks’ plans, in spite of a resolve to stay detached, but today she had other things on her mind. She walked directly over to Francis and asked, “How is the patient? Has the poultice helped his wound?”
Francis’s smile looked a little nervous. “It may have helped too well, child. He’s regained his senses and had questions this morning about being nursed by a woman. A golden angel, he called you.”
Bridget grinned. “I’ve always tried to tell you that I’m much holier than you give me credit for.”
“’Tis not a cause for mirth, Bridget. It could have been disastrous, but I think I’ve convinced him that you were but a fever dream.”
Bridget’s grin faded. A fever dream. That was all she could ever be to anyone from outside of these walls. “If the fever’s broken, he should have a new poultice,” she said.
Ebert had straightened up to his full height and towered over both his fellow monk and Bridget. “Francis is right, Bridget. You must not be seen by the stranger again.”
“Make up the poultice and I’ll take it to him,” Francis added.
Bridget felt an unaccustomed prickle of resentment. She had thought of little else but the wounded stranger all day long, and it seemed unfair that now that he had regained his senses she must hide herself away. “I should see the progress of the wound myself,” she argued. “It will tell me what herbs to add to his cure.”
Both