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Maria hesitated, until the first rays of dawn, to return to Gród Narew. She didn’t want to face the path in the darkness so soon after last night. What scared her more than meeting Darien again in the dark was the idea of what she might be persuaded to do—things the night invited that she couldn’t even bear to contemplate under the light of the sun.
Avoiding Darien, however, meant she would almost certainly arrive at the fortress as Lukasz was tending to his duties, and facing him again was inconceivable. So she hurried along at a run, not even sparing a breath to sing to herself, racing against the sound of the tower bells—racing as if Lukasz or the Devil himself chased her onward.
But the bells rang out while she was still in the woods, and as she emerged before Gród Narew, she saw the horses being led out to the pasture. Her heart sank as she ran up to the gate, all the time gripping her cross and praying that she would not face Lukasz today.
Today, God favored her. Lukasz did not leap over the stone pasture wall for her. She reached the gate, disbelieving, and looked out over the pasture. Am I mad, searching for him?
“Looking for someone?” one of the guards at the gate chuckled.
She turned around and said, “N-no.”
The guard peered at her from under a dull conical helmet, and over whiskers as full and wild as a rabid badger. “Looking for the stableboy you talk to, aren’t you?”
“No,” she snapped, suddenly feeling waves of revulsion that this man might actually think she wanted to talk to Lukasz.
A laugh emerged from somewhere under the bush of his mustache. “That is good, young miss, since you shan’t find him.”
Maria was about to walk by, but something—a dreadful worry—made her stop and ask, “Why do you say that?”
“Because Master Lukasz was ejected from his household, and I doubt they will accept him back.”
“What happened?”
The guard chuckled. “I thought you weren’t looking for him?”
Maria sighed. “Sir, would you be kind enough to tell me what happened?”
“Well, since you ask so sweetly, your friend Lukasz partook of much more ale than was wise, and compounded his lack of wisdom by convincing himself of how unjust was the Wojewoda’s decision to relocate him to a common room away from his normal quarters by the stables. So, in a haze of drunken inventiveness, he took it upon himself to evict one of our wounded German guests from his old rooms.”
“Christ have mercy,” Maria whispered. “Did he hurt anyone?”
The guard chuckled more and said, “He should thank Christ he wasn’t hurt. The German, however badly wounded he was, was more than a match for a drunk stableboy. Tale has it that his master, three stableboys, the German captain, and the Wojewoda Bolesław himself converged on the room to find your Lukasz crying like a little girl, flat on his face, with a wounded monk riding his back as if he were an ass.”
Maria shook her head, disbelieving. She was still too close to the memory of Lukasz jumping her in the forest to reconcile that threat with the pathetic clown in the guard’s story.
“Bolesław wanted a dozen lashes on the spot, but the German captain pled mercy for the drunkard. The Wojewoda gave the boy’s master leave to mete out a punishment.”
“And he banished him?”
“I don’t know his master’s intent, but your Lukasz left last night with the clothes on his back. I’m certain he’s not returning.”
The more she thought about it, the more sense it made. Lukasz had always been petty and easily offended, and too fond of his own meager status. It was as if all his flaws had conspired to destroy him in one night.
As petty as he was, he had been left with only one outlet for his anger: her. He must have left to run after her straightaway. He knew the path she walked home. She shuddered at what might have happened if he hadn’t caught up with her. Would he have come into her house? Threatened her family? Her brothers were strong, but they slept too deeply. She could easily imagine a dagger slitting a sleeping throat or two before enough of alarm was raised to rouse them.
But the events of last night were still such a jumbled mess in her mind that she hadn’t spared a thought to wonder which German Lukasz had attempted to evict—not until she saw the broken latch on the door to Josef’s room.
Lukasz’s room.
“Josef!” she yelled, pulling the door open and almost spilling Josef’s breakfast in the process. “Josef!” she repeated, unnecessarily, as he turned to face her, clad only in a long nightshirt, seated at the foot of the bed.
“Are you all right?” she asked, deeply relieved to see him smile weakly in response. The odd realization struck her that, however unknowingly, Josef had punished her nemesis as much as the outlaw Darien had. The thought broadened her smile until she felt the tug of the bruise on her cheek.
“I seem to fare better than I deserve,” he said. “From your abrupt entrance, you must have heard of my nighttime visitor.”
She looked at him: strong as he was, the injury still weighed upon him. As much as his expression and posture tried to project a hale physique, she saw the lie of it in the beads of sweat on his brow in the cool morning air, and in the lack of color touching his lips. “You shouldn’t be sitting up.”
“Perhaps not,” he sighed. “I thought that when God granted me the strength to resist being waylaid, He might have left me with the power to stand up this morning.”
Maria shook her head and set his breakfast down, then helped him back into bed. “You haven’t seen how badly you were wounded.” She took a clean cloth and wiped the sweat of his exertion from his brow, from his cheek, and from his neck. She lingered a moment with her hand against his face.
“I have felt it.”
“Let me look at it, and see what damage you’ve done to yourself.”
His brow furrowed. “My lady, allow me some modesty, please.”
His addressing her as “lady” instantly reminded Maria of their relative statuses. Whatever comfort she provided him, that couldn’t change. She pulled her hand away, wringing the cloth.
“Sir, did you allow the doctor to see you last night?”
“I was unhurt.”
“Do you wish to see him now?”
“I am healing fine.”
“You’re my responsibility. If you don’t wish me to examine your wounds, I will fetch him.”
He muttered something quickly in German that Maria couldn’t quite understand. Something about God testing him again. Then he said, “Do me the favor of turning your back a moment?”
“As you wish.” She turned away from him. “I can fetch the doctor, if that would make you more comfortable.”
“I serve the Hospital of St. Mary in Jerusalem. Caring for the sick and wounded is a tenet of my Order. I know doctors and their practices.”
“You are afraid of what he might do?”
“No. But I know that such men, once called to assist, find their own vanity ill-served if they do nothing—even if nothing should be the best course of action.” He sighed and said, “Turn back around, then, and satisfy yourself that I am in no distress.”
She turned, and Josef made a point of staring up at the ceiling and not meeting her eyes. He had drawn the sheets up around his waist to cover his privates, and had pulled his nightshirt up to expose his abdomen.
She stared at him for several long moments. He might not realize it, but she had already seen all that the sheet covered. And, ironically, the concealment only drew her attention, firing her memories of what was hidden. Her cheeks flamed.
“Maria?”
“Yes,” she answered, quickly bringing her attention back to the wounds in his abdomen. The linens that bound his wounds were spotted with stains of old blood, but fortunately there were no signs of fresh blood or other discharges.
“These need to be changed, in any event,” she told him.
He grunted as she untied the knots and removed the old dressing. She frowned at his stomach. The wound was an ugly, jagged crescent that arced around his navel. The edges were tied shut by coarse stitches, threaded either by his comrades in the Order or by the Wojewoda’s doctor.
But, Maria had to admit, as horrid as the wound appeared, it did not display any of the signs she knew to look for. The flesh showed only some flushing next to the black clotted lips of the scar, no white, no red; and nothing seeped from the wound except a few drops of healthy ruby blood where he had stretched too far against his stitches.
Seeing how well he was actually doing was a balm for her soul, as if God had granted a blessing in compensation for the torment of the prior night. She sighed and touched his hand, their relative stations completely forgotten.
“You have not hurt yourself unduly.”
“Good.”
“God has blessed you with strength.” She turned to look at his face. “Please avoid testing the limits of that blessing.”
“I can try.” He surprised her by squeezing her hand.
She stood still for a moment, then told him, “You need a new dressing on that wound.”
She worked quickly, binding the ugly scar with clean linen. As she worked, Josef’s sheet shifted slightly and she found herself once more beginning to blush. When she was done, she turned her back again so he could rearrange his sheets and his nightshirt. And so she could hide the burning on her cheeks.
“May I ask, what caused that wound?”
Josef stayed silent behind her.
“Sir?” She couldn’t help but look over her shoulder. Josef had already managed to regain his modesty. His expression, however, had gone tense. He glanced at her, then shook his head. “I am not permitted to discuss it.”
She turned around. “You can say nothing?”
“No, I have taken vows—” He stopped and stared into her eyes so intently that she reached up to touch her own face. She winced slightly at the touch. “Forgive me, Maria, but you’re injured yourself.”
She shook her head and turned away. “It’s nothing.”
She was a lowly servant. No one else at Gród Narew had showed any interest in the small abrasion where Lukasz had struck her. No one had any concern for it. Why would he be the one to notice it?
Her heart caught a bit when he asked, “Did some man strike you?”
“No,” she said sharply. Too sharply. The false denial hung in the air between them as obvious as the cut on her face.
“Maria, as a member of the Order, it is my duty to protect the innocent—”
“Nothing. It is nothing. I tripped and fell.” She brought him his breakfast and added, “I’m sorry, but I have other duties to perform. May I have your leave?”
“Of course. But are you sure—”
“Thank you, sir.” She turned and left him before the lie became an unbearable weight.
I’m sorry, Josef, but I’ve made vows of my own.
God seemed intent on teaching Josef humility. He had worked very hard to conceal the pain he had felt last night, and had used his past as a talisman to keep his thoughts within the bounds of chastity as Maria bent over his half-naked body and tended to his wounds. As she touched him.
But apparently he was not to be permitted to lull himself with such victories. First there had been Maria’s direct challenge. He had not expected the question, though he didn’t know why. Maria had no reason to know the details of his obligations, or what he was permitted and not permitted to talk about.
Still, it had caught him off guard.
As had the realization that someone had struck her. He had been so preoccupied with his own pains and pandering to his own modesty that he hadn’t even noticed the mark on her cheek and the growing shadow under her eye. It had been so unexpected that he hadn’t been able to help blurting it out when he had noticed.
She had snapped the denial at him almost as if in retaliation for his own secrets. He had tried to get her to say more, but had only succeeded in driving her away. Now the dark mood that had gripped him as she’d left gave the lie to his pretensions to virtue.
All he knew was that someone had threatened her, and that once he got his strength back, he was going to teach that person some proper manners.