FOUR
Rain water sluiced off the narrow overhang of the porch, spattering the muddy ground around the villa. The clouds were portentous and gray, and they hung low in the sky, trapping the chilly air close to the ground. It had been raining since the previous night, the skies weeping a continuous stream of water as if hidden dams that had been frozen shut since winter began were now open.
Ramiro sat on a wooden stool, a wool blanket wrapped around his aching shoulders. He always felt the seasonal change coming, a dull throb in his jaw and left shoulder. It had been a week since he had run off the deserters and buried the dead man in the hills; two nights ago, the dreams had come back. Nightmare memories of the battle at Alarcos. The last defense of the old citadel. The waves of armed Moors scampering up the siege ladders. The lines of archers sending volley after volley of arrows over the walls. The screams of the dying Christian soldiers to whom no succor could be given.
And then the dreams would change. The Moors would grow furry legs and their helmets would turn into glowing eyes. Their curved swords would become wicked fangs, and they would scramble across the stone bulwarks of the citadel with a nimbleness that defied rational thought. The dead would reanimate, and the shambling ranks of rotting soldiers were a solid wall behind him, constantly pressing forward against the few living knights. They couldn’t fall back, not with the ranks of the moaning dead behind them. They could only stand their ground against a monstrous enemy that boiled over the walls.
In the dream, he already had his scars and the dead flocked to him because he was the least disfigured of them all. He was their radiant king, and they all rallied at the sound of his beautiful voice. He always woke just after he gave the command to push the eight-legged invaders back, the throaty sound of his shout echoing in his ears.
Several of the goats called out to him from the pen, and he shifted his weight on the stool, shivering slightly beneath the blanket. He knew he should go back inside the villa; he should crawl back into bed with Louisa and wrap his arms around her swollen frame and hold her tight. She was unlikely to suffer the constraint—especially in sleep—and for a little while the dreams wouldn’t come back.
The child was due sometime in the next month. He had hoped to give it a lifetime of solitude and peace, a simple life free of the conflict that had left its mark on him, but what he had learned from Diego the deserter continued to gnaw at him—a persistent poison that infected his dreams. A reminder that the war would never stop.
“You didn’t sleep,” Louisa said as she waddled across the main room of the villa. She was a fine-boned woman and her distended belly seemed to constantly endanger her balance.
Ramiro shook his head as he inspected the heavy pot suspended over the fire in the hearth. “I had the dream again,” he said.
When she reached his side, she ran her long fingers through his hair and he closed his eyes as she stroked his head. She was half his age; in the beginning he had questioned her desire to be with him. What could a woman like her see in an old crippled soldier like him? Was he a convenient shield against the suitors in her village who had persistently taken an interest in her late father’s farm? Was he like the wounded lamb that could no longer care for itself? Worthy of love because he was so clearly an outcast and pariah? He had resisted her affection for so long that, when he finally allowed her to touch his face, he wept for having denied himself the simple pleasure of another’s touch for so many years.
“You are awake now,” she said soothingly. “It cannot hurt you.”
He nodded slightly, leaning into her ministrations. She stroked harder, running her nails across his scalp. Like she did with the goats when she fed them scraps of carrots and beets from their garden. “The Almohads are back,” he murmured, finally telling her what he had learned a week ago. “There is an army on the plain. They mean to march on Toledo.”
“They won’t come here,” she said.
He didn’t share her conviction. The ache in his shoulder told him otherwise. He glanced down at the wooden spoon in his hand. He was holding it loosely, fingers wrapped around the shaft, thumb resting on the wood. The same way he held a sword.
It was buried out past the orchard, wrapped in the white tabard of the order with its red cross and fleur-de-lis. Along with his maille. He half hoped the roots of the oak would have claimed the oilskin bundle, but he knew the tree would give back its secret cache readily enough.
The thaw had come. The ground would be soft.