Page 52 of My Hero
“Nay, Tim,” she replied. Garth could hear the amusement in her voice.
“I know you said God would forgive me for the eggs,” he whispered, “but I don’t think the Abbot will.”
“But they’ve given you strength,” Cynthia assured him.
“I don’t think the Abbot will forgive me,” he insisted.
At the boy’s innocent words, a slow fire began to burn inside Garth. Aye, the lad had drunk egg broth at Lent. Broken shells were yet strewn by the empty cup beside his bed. But if what Cynthia said was true—if the broth had served to strengthen the poor waif—was it a sin?
“Tim, the Abbot…” Cynthia began awkwardly, shaking her hands as if she shook off water.
“Will forgive you,” Garth finished with conviction, moving beside her to touch the boy’s forehead. “As God does. You see, God loves good little lads like you, and he needs them here on earth to share his message.” The shimmer of hope in the boy’s glassy eyes almost stopped the words in his throat. “God wants you to get well.”
Tim solemnly searched his face. “Then I will,” he said.
Behind him, the door creaked open. “Lady Cynthia.”
“Elias,” she said.
The boy was breathless, and his face was rosy, as if he’d been running for miles.
“The Abbot…couldn’t come, my lady.”
Cynthia winced almost imperceptibly, then gave him a calm nod. “All right, Elias.” She pulled forth a vial from her satchel. “Nan, give him this. He should be better tomorrow,” she murmured to the boy’s mother.
Then she began rummaging in her satchel with the pent-up fury of a storm about to break. “Couldn’t come?” she muttered to herself. “Orwouldn’t?”
Garth frowned at Elias. “Did the Abbot say why he couldn’t come?”
“Aye, my lord, er…Father. He said he was indis-, indis—”
“Indisposed!” Cynthia snapped.
“Is the Abbot ill?” Garth asked the boy.
“Not yet,” Cynthia replied, pulling the strings on her satchel tight. “And it’s plain he’d like to keep it that way.” With a taut smile, she said farewell to the household, promising to visit on the morrow.
Outside the hovel, preparing to leave, she gave vent to her true feelings toward the Abbot.
“Indisposed!” she said, grabbing the reins of her palfrey. “He has no time to see to the souls of the dead?” She flung her satchel over the horse’s crupper. The bottles within clattered together, almost hard enough to break. “Do you know the real reason he doesn’t come?” she asked venomously as Garth steadied the stirrup for her. “He wishes to avoid the murrain in the village. The selfish bastard doesn’t want to risk contracting the disease.”
Halfway up to the saddle, her limbs gave out, and she slid back down against him with a small murmur of apology.
Garth frowned. The poor lass was as weak as a newborn foal. Even if she managed to mount, she’d never stay astride.
He eyed her horse. He hadn’t mounted a beast in four years, but he’d ridden every day as a boy. It wasn’t something one forgot. Sweeping his cassock behind him, he hauled himself up and threw his leg over the saddle. The familiar feel of leather beneath his thighs brought on a rush of pleasant boyhood memories.
He pulled Cynthia up before him, gathered the reins, and nudged the horse forward. Before long, she was drifting to sleep upon his chest. A warm, fierce wave of protectiveness enveloped him as she nestled closer, mingled with more carnal feelings that troubled his mind and body, feelings a man of the cloth should never have.
The trio of horses rode through the strange, quiet country between dusk and twilight, in shifting shadows of purple and gold. Overhead, the stars blinked on, one by one, like shy children coming out to play. The air grew chill. Garth wrapped the folds of his cassock more tightly around Cynthia, who, to his chagrin, snuggled against him as if she belonged there. The road was silent except for the squeak of leather tack and the soft rattle of the knights’ chain mail.
But a battle raged within Garth, a battle fraught with passion and self-doubt and peril. Four years of faith had been shaken today, jarred by the woman slumbering obliviously in his arms.
It was dangerous, the way Cynthia spoke out against the Abbot, countermanding the orders of the church, mandating which souls would live and which would die. Heretics had been burned for less.
He’d seen her work, watched her summon up curious energy between her hands, calling upon some mysterious force to render healing, swooning with the power of whatever demon or angel she invoked.
And yet, she’d done it all with good conscience, in good faith. It was clear she worked only for the benefit of her people. Hell, she’d worked herself half to death today for them.
