Page 51 of My Hero
Lord, he prayed it was so. He could see a faint pulse thrumming in her throat, and the breath still whistled softly between her rosy lips. But her healing efforts must have drained her life force. Her neck arched limply over his arm, and her limbs were as heavy and slack as an empty coat of chain mail.
His heart pounded. He had to save her.
As the guards hovered at a safe distance, he knelt in the spring weeds and laid her gently on the ground. How natural she looked there, her coppery hair spilled across the dark green clover, the fingers of one hand threaded through the stems, as if she belonged to the earth. But he’d be damned if he’d let her return to it. Not yet.
He lifted her head to rest upon his knee and fanned her with the hem of his cassock.
“Come on, Cynthia,” he urged. “Wake up.”
Her lips were pale, and her breath barely stirred the tendrils of hair framing her face.
He closed his eyes and bent his head in murmured prayer, reciting every entreaty he knew to convince God to spare her.
Still she lay silent.
Finally, abandoning prayer, he clasped her hand and brought it to his chest.
“Cynthia,” he whispered, letting memories of her flow freely. “Remember the roses? How you stole cuttings from them? Remember the jasmine? And the bees?” Something warm bloomed inside him as he spoke the words, long-forgotten sensations, hopes and dreams, like a dormant bulb awakening after a long winter. “I don’t think you’d ever been stung by a bee before,” he began to recall. “But you were so brave, laying your neck bare to my blade so I could…”
She stirred then, moaning softly, wrinkling her forehead. “So…many. So many…”
Giddy with relief, he squeezed her hand. “Aye. But I took care of them, didn’t I?”
Her eyes opened to stare up at him. It was as if she tried to penetrate his very thoughts. “You…took care of them?”
“Aye,” he replied, though he suspected it wasn’t bees she spoke of in her confusion.
“Tim,” she mumbled, making a feeble attempt to sit up. “I have to take care of little Tim. He needs me.”
“You’re as weak as a kitten. I’ll see to him.”
“Nay!” She clutched at the front of his cassock, dragging herself up.
Garth knew when he was fighting a losing battle. “At least let me go with you then. Stay with your guard while I bless Milla’s body. Then we’ll both take care of Tim.”
Happily, the guards seemed to agree with that suggestion. Garth delivered last rites to the poor mother and blessed the new babe, who gurgled quietly now in the arms of one of the peasant women. Then he quickly joined Cynthia.
Little Tim seemed as insubstantial as shadow. The small boy’s translucent flesh hung on him like linen over bones, and his eyes loomed huge in his pale face. They grew even wider when Garth neared his bed.
“Have you come,” the lad gulped, “to punish me?”
Garth was too disconcerted by the remark to answer.
“Nay, Tim,” Cynthia assured the boy, pushing past Garth to the bed. “He’s here to bless you.”
“Am I going to die?” he asked Garth.
Garth’s chest felt as if he’d been kicked. What kind of question was that for a young boy to ask?
“Nay, of course not,” Cynthia scolded. She began rubbing her hands together vigorously. “You feel better already after the mint water, don’t you?”
“Aye. My belly’s quiet.” His eyes lost their flatness for an instant. “It was good. Better than that egg…” He broke off and glanced anxiously at Garth.
“Aye, mint is tasty.”
Cynthia leaned forward and placed her hands upon the boy’s head, blocking Tim’s view. But not his loudly whispered comments.
“My lady, I like this priest better than the Abbot. Is that a sin?”
