The man standing by the door, shifting from foot to foot, was tall and dark haired, with black eyes that reminded me of Brody. This man, though, was unshaved and none too clean. The aromas wafting from him spoke of barns and stables and worse. From the state of his clothes, he had been sleeping in such places. Now he was damp, too. The scent was pungent.
I held my breath, except when I spoke. “Your brother is ill?”
“He is,” the man said. “Can ye come?”
“Can you pay?” I said bluntly, although I was not above providing charitable service when I deemed it suitable.
“Aye, we’ve coin,” the man said.
“He’s a Scot,” Brody murmured near my ear. “It’s as well I’m coming with you.” He shifted the sword on his belt in a way that let the man glimpse it under his cloak.
The man shook his head. “No harm will come to ye. Ye’ve my promise on that. Besides, Longshanks has settled things, hasn’t he? That be why he’s back in York.”
I wasn’t worried. The Scots were ruthless fighters, yet it would take more than courage to harm me. Now that I had been publicly declared a doctor, I could move freely among almost any community and meet nothing but good will for my services.
Yet I was glad Brody was at my shoulder, anyway.
We followed the man, Cameron, through the streets and across the Ouse to poorer areas of the town, where the houses were smaller and silent. No good cooking smells came from them and very little light, for tallows were expensive and grease was kept for cooking and sometimes as its own meal.
Cameron opened the door of one of the smaller cots and stood aside to let us in.
It was dim inside, lit only by a small fire in a mud brick hearth. There was no furniture, only a sleeping shelf with the doors shuttered and a log turned on its end as a perch in front of the fire.
On a pallet on the earthen floor was a man in bloody clothes. He was groaning, holding his stomach. His hands were drenched in the fluid, too.
Brody held me back. “He’s not sick.”
“One could argue he is deathly ill from a sword to the stomach,” I pointed out.
There was movement in the far corner, where the light from the fire didn’t reach. A larger shadow detached itself from the dark. Brody’s sword was out before they had taken a second step.
It was a hooded woman. “Can you help my brother?” she asked. She lowered the hood of her mantle and the fire played upon her face. She was as out of place in that hovel as we were. Her clothes were rich, fit for the king’s court, yet I stared at her face. Her dear, familiar face.
“Tyra,” I breathed.
“Told ye he was shouting at ye on the street today,” Cameron said gruffly.
Brody drew in a deep breath, controlling his own reaction.
Tyra glanced at Cameron. There was impatience in her look. Then she returned her gaze to me. “My name is Mary. Cameron is my elder brother. David is our younger brother.” She nodded to the groaning man. “Can you help him?”
Mary. She was denying her identity.
Then it hit me with an impact that stole my breath. These were her brothers.
No one with a nature that allowed them to live for two hundred years would have living relatives of any sort. I knew that with a thoroughness that came from hard experience, watching relatives die one by one from old age, always watching from a distance where they would not see me in my ageless form. It had been one of the harder lessons to learn and it had lodged deep.
Brody sighed. It would not be heard by any of the three humans in the hovel. He had come to the same conclusion, then.
This was not Tyra.
Yet every line of her face was identical to those I held in my memory.
She bent over the writhing man and looked up at us. “Please. Help him.”
I took off my cloak. “I will need more light. Cameron, stoke the fire and bring candles if you have them. Also, clean cloth and water, as much as you can find.” Cameron scurried to obey.
“Mary…you said your name was Mary, yes?” I asked her.
She looked up at me and the jolt was that of a thunderclap. Taylor had looked up in that way, her head tilted just a little to one side.
I remembered to breathe.
“Yes. Mary,” she said quietly.
“Do you have your sewing basket here?”
She nodded.
“I will need thread, the stoutest you have. And a good needle.”
Brody took my cloak from me. “What can I do?”
“Find out why the man got a sword in the gullet,” I said shortly, thinking of the soldiers in the inn that afternoon. “There is no war near here and a wound like his, honestly got, would not need this subterfuge.” I looked at him. “I would prefer to know if I am entertaining disaster by stitching the man up again.”
“As would I,” Brody said. He moved over to the fire, where Cameron was feeding fresh tinder and logs onto it and bent to speak to him.
I wrenched my gaze away from Mary’s face, as she watched her wounded brother, rolled up my sleeves and knelt in the dirt next to her, to tend the man.
It was the beginning of a long night.
* * * * *
It was close to dawn before I had finished the cleaning and stitching. David had long since fainted, to my relief, and remained unconscious throughout.
Mary and Cameron moved around the cottage behind me, fetching and carrying, providing whatever I asked for. I don’t know where they got the cloth and the water, for the cottage appeared to be empty. I did not care, except to curse that I had left my chest of supplies and tools at my lodgings, pushed under the bed and out of mind. There were herbs in the chest that would help, now.
A straightforward stab is easier to treat with a simple needle and plenty of thread. A more jagged one, produced by a side swipe of a blade, for example, is complicated and there is a greater danger of organ damage. David was lucky. There was no telling odor emanating from his wound that would speak of perforated bowels or intestines.
Yet it still takes time to close up a deep wound in a way that would keep the edges firmly closed until they naturally knit back together. I had completed such operations thousands of times on dozens of battlefields and was confident of my skills. Unless David hung for whatever reason had given him the wound, he would otherwise live.
Light was beginning to show through the chinks in the shutters when I sat back while Mary silently changed the stump of the candle sitting next to David for a fresh one that would cast better light.
Brody crouched down next to me.
“Did you learn anything?” I asked.
Cameron sat upon the upturned log, looking dourly at the fire. Brody had taken him out into the night a while before. I didn’t bother asking why. Now they had returned and Cameron was sulking.
Brody nodded in answer to my question. “There’s more of Mary’s clan in York besides her two brothers. They tried to attack the King’s party this afternoon.”
I nodded. It was as I had expected. “Why on earth would anyone with any sense attack the King? His army goes with him everywhere.”
“It wasn’t the English king we were wanting,” Mary said, her voice low yet clear.
“The soldiers I treated were from the back of the file,” I said in agreement. “What is back there that would make such an attempt worth it?”
Brody made a sound of disbelief and got to his feet. “The crown jewels,” he said, staring at her. “The wagon with the jewels travels at the end, where it won’t be noticed.”
Mary wrinkled her nose. “Baubles for rich, fat Englishmen,” she said contemptuously. “Jewels do not feed children. Who cares if they’re stolen?”
“Edward might care a great deal,” Brody replied. “Is that why they tried?”
I thought of Alfonso, the King I had served, and his fondness for grandeur and richness. I gasped. “The crown!” I looked at Brody. “Does the King’s crown have any significance here, apart from being a crown the king wears?”
Mary hissed and got to her feet and I knew I had guessed rightly.
Brody nodded. “Saint Edward’s crown. Every king since Edward the Confessor wore it. John was the last. Henry, who succeeded him, declared the crown a holy relic and too precious for a simple king to wear. He carried it in a gold-lined lockbox with him, everywhere. So has every king since.” He looked at Mary, who was standing at the fire, warming her hands. “If the crown was stolen, it would be a symbolic defeat greater than any battle the king might lose.”
He dropped his voice and turned his shoulder so he was speaking to me directly and at a volume that wouldn’t be overheard by anyone else in the room. “Edward just forced the Scots into recognizing him as the mediator of the Scottish succession. The Scottish lords gave way. Most of them are half-British, anyway. The common people, though, would find the theft of the King’s crown a fitting retribution for the insult.”
“Until Edward marches into Edinburgh and slaughters them all,” I whispered back. I knew a little about Kings and their affinity for symbols and pageantry.
Brody scowled. “The Scots are a nation of hot heads,” he breathed. “I guarantee they haven’t thought beyond slapping the King in the face with this.”
I looked at the grumpy, slouched figure of Cameron, outlined by the fire. “Surely they would not try again?” I asked, thinking of the relentless courage of their fighters. “The crown will be locked up in the keep by now and the curtain wall is unscalable.”
“Not for Scots used to scrambling about mountains,” Mary said quietly, turning to look at us.
I think I might have gaped at her.
“You’re mad,” Brody said. “All of you. It would be suicide. York castle is the most highly defended keep north of the Tower of London.”
“What have we got to lose?” Mary asked, with a quiet dignity.
David stirred groggily next to my knees. “Talk to her,” I urged Brody. “I must finish this quickly.” I bent to my work once more, only vaguely hearing the two of them talking behind me, their tones strident. Cameron stayed by the fire, dour and silent.
The light issuing through the cracks of the shutters was bright by the time I finished. David was definitely returning to consciousness by then.
I washed my hands in the bowl, then got to my feet. Mary had returned to the fire, which was burning low. Brody stood with his feet planted and his arms crossed. He looked as though he had made no headway at all.
At my glance he scowled heavier than either Mary or her brother. “Mary is being kept in the castle as a bond forcing her father to abide by Edward’s strictures in the north.”
I shrugged. “It’s a common enough practice.” Alfonso’s queen had kept the marriageable daughters of both enemies and allies at court, too. Some of the most strategic alliances had been cemented under the queen’s supervision.
“Edward’s queen has not stirred out of London in nearly twenty years,” Mary said and hesitated, looking uncomfortable. Color bloomed in her cheeks.
Cameron stirred. “Edward is a bloody letch,” he decreed. “If my sister survives with her maidenhood intact long enough to be well married, it will only be because she is more nimble than he.”
“You want to steal the crown to distract him, then?” Brody asked, amused.
“A symbolic castration, as they can’t arrange a proper one,” I added.
Mary whirled to face us, her face working. “This is not just about me! It is for everyone. When they hear the news that Longshank’s precious crown has been taken from right under his nose, then, oh, then, the pleasure that will give them all…!” Her face glowed as she spoke.
“Hope,” Brody said flatly. “You’re talking about hope.”
“Yes!” Her tone said that Brody had put his finger upon the core of it and she only just now recognized it, too.
David moaned softly. His eyes were still closed, yet his hand moved to his belly. We were disturbing him, which would not help him heal. I looked at his sister. In my mind, she was still Tyra, even though every word she spoke gave lie to the belief. “I would speak to you outside, for a moment, with your brother’s permission?”
Mary didn’t look at her elder brother. She moved directly to the door. Cameron did not protest, either.
I unlatched the door and glanced at Brody. “This must be halted now,” I said.
Brody nodded. “Good luck,” he added, as Mary stepped through the door, raising her hood.
I moved out into a mist that swirled around us with clammy fingers and wished I had picked up my cloak. It was cold enough for me to feel the chill. Mary wrapped her mantle around her and shivered. From deep inside the hood, she looked at me. “You waste your time attempting to dissuade us. Scotland needs to see their surrender to Edward was not unconditional, that some of the old spirit remains.”
She was not Taylor, yet her stubbornness was Taylor’s, nevertheless. It made my heart sigh. A lock of hair had come loose during the night and lay against her temple. I wanted to tuck the lock back into place. Instead, I clenched my hands to keep them where they were. “Edward has only just sorted out the Scottish succession. If you jeopardize that, if you try to make him look like a fool, his retribution will be ferocious.”
“And yet, you persist in attempting to dissuade me.” She sighed.
“Are you promised, yet?” I asked.
“Why?”
“I presume your family agreed to your attendance at court because the king held out the promise of a good marriage?”
She looked confused. “Of course,” she said stiffly.
“Only, no arrangement was made before Edward secured Scotland.”
For the first time, Mary showed any doubt or hesitation. She bit her lip, making her look incredibly young and fresh. She really was untouched, then. Now I could see clearly that she was not Taylor, yet it did not seem to matter—my heart was still working hard, resisting my efforts to contain it.
“You think the King delayed a marriage arrangement to make my family cooperate?” she asked.
“Your family is close to you—or you would not have slipped away from the castle to tend to your brother and risk the wrath of the King’s army if you were not. Your family cares what happens to you. Edward would know that. He used it.”
Doubt filled her eyes.
“Now that Scotland has agreed to the succession, the King will find a marriage arrangement for you that gives him a political alliance and he’ll do it swiftly.”
“Such an alliance would benefit my family, too,” she pointed out.
“If you try to steal the crown again, you put that alliance in jeopardy.”
Mary scowled. “The king does not have to know I was involved…”
“The only advantage you would gain from the theft is if it is widely known that Scotland took the crown,” I pointed out. “How many Scots ladies linger at court right now? How long before the King determines which of them was involved?”
Mary’s cheeks seemed to hollow out as her jaw flexed. She did not like what I was saying, yet it was a truth she needed to hear, even if she resented the messenger.
“Think hard, Mary,” I added. “Weigh your future and your family’s welfare while you decide. Edward has executed more than one woman in his time and for lesser offences than embarrassing the king.”
She blanched. I had deliberately scared her for I suspected less than wholesale fear would not move her from her choice. I didn’t like doing it and tried to leaven the blow. “Scotland will survive this trouble, as it has countless others. Have faith in your own people.”
Cameron appeared beside us, moving through the mist. He wrapped a ragged cloak around him. “Ye must return to the castle before morning prayers, when ye’ll be missed,” he told Mary.
I compared his shabby outfit to Mary’s elegant one. Clearly, the family had poured the last of their resources into outfitting her appropriately for court, with an eye upon a most fortunate marriage to pull them out of their financial woes.
“I won’t delay you,” I told them both. “Your brother will sleep for most of the day now. When he wakes, he will need food. Broth, if you can acquire it.”
Cameron dug in his purse, which hung slack and light on his belt. I waved him away. “You do not need to pay me,” I told him. “Keep your coins. You will need them.”
“We pay our way,” Mary said stiffly. “Take the money.”
I held out my hand and Cameron put one of the new farthings on my palm. I thanked him and tucked it away and watched them move off into the mist. Behind me, the cottage door swung shut once more and Brody came up beside me. “Did you talk her out of it?” He handed me my cloak, which I donned gratefully.
“I don’t know,” I said honestly. “She has doubts, now, where she did not before. It might be enough to hold them from a second attempt.”
“Then you managed more than I,” Brody admitted. “I could not move her. Not by an inch.”
By unspoken agreement, we began walking, heading back to the warm room and comfortable chairs we had left last night. The chill of the morning was enough to make us hurry.
“Is Mary so very much like her?” Brody asked, with a touch of diffidence.
I understood his wariness. She was not Taylor, yet in Brody’s mind, if she was close enough in appearance, then he was for the first time able to picture Taylor in his mind. That would give him a solid, real person to go with the name and the electrifying facts from the four days he did not remember. He didn’t want to grasp that until he was certain Mary was the replica he needed.
“She is alike enough that…” I hesitated. Brody and Veris and even Taylor were broad-minded to the point of immorality, depending upon who was judging them. I had ceased making such judgement a long time ago, yet I hesitated now because I did not know how tolerant Brody could be. Not in this.
“…that you could easily fall in love with her, too,” Brody finished.
A tight band squeezed my chest, making breathing difficult. “Then I have hidden nothing from you, at all.”
Brody patted my shoulder. “Not a thing,” he assured me.
“You…do not mind?”
“I envy you,” he said flatly. “You knew her. You remember her. I do not. That you loved her, too…it tells me she was an extraordinary woman. You would not love anyone less worthy.”
The pressure around my chest lessened. “Of course, if Taylor were standing before us both, I would not presume…”
“Of course not,” Brody said. “But Mary is not Taylor, is she?”
“Which is exactly why I should not pursue anything with her. It could only lead to disappointment because she is not Taylor, after all.”
“You’re too honorable, Alex.” Brody shook his head. “There are times when it is perfectly acceptable to douse the fire in your blood and move on with your life, as long as both parties understand the arrangement.”
“She is a maid awaiting the king’s pleasure,” I pointed out. “I am a foreigner with an absence of antecedents. If her brothers did not instantly run me through with their swords, she would laugh herself into illness at the suggestion and she would be right to do so.”
“As I said, you’re too honorable.” Brody pushed open the inn door and we stepped inside. Warmth and the smell of stale ale greeted us. The common room was empty of everything but a dog sleeping by the hearth.
We climbed the stairs to the room Brody had been given. Up here, the smell of baking bread was stronger and I sniffed appreciatively. I had never tasted western food and never would, although the aromas were intriguing and the good scent of well-risen, crusty loaves was one of the most appealing.
“People will be up and about for the day, quite soon,” I judged as Brody shut the door behind us. “Mary and her clan are not stupid enough to attempt to take the crown in broad daylight. It will give her the day to consider her choice.”
Brody shook his head. “Not that one. Doubt won’t stop her.”
“How can you know?”
“I spoke to her at length. I gained the measure of her. It’s more than stubbornness.” He dropped his cloak and sword into the chair that had been his. “You made her doubt, but that is all. She is the sort to hew to the action that is right, whether it is prudent or not, regardless of risk or fear. She will see it through because it is the right choice.”
“It isn’t the right choice,” I protested. Although, even as I disputed him, I knew he was right. The sinking coldness in my gut told me so. “Edward is capricious and cruel. I’ve learned that much living here for two seasons. His reprisals will not be measured or appropriate. He will slaughter the Scots for their role in his humiliation.” I tossed my cloak and weapons aside, with an impatient thrust. “We have to stop them,” I finished.
“We?” Brody tilted his head curiously.
“Help me, Brody. Tonight. They will surely act tonight, if they act at all. You and I…between us, with our strength and speed, we can contain her.”
“You mean ‘them’, don’t you?”
“Yes,” I said impatiently. “Of course I mean them.”
Brody drew closer and lowered his voice, for the walls of the room were thin daub. “You know as well as I we should not interfere with the run of human affairs. This is dangerously close to doing just that, Alex.”
“As close as you came, when you warned King Richard in Acre that the Saracens were about to attack?”
Brody grinned. It was an unexpected expression. “Touché, Doctor.” His amusement faded. “Very well, I will help you. For a price.”
“I am a simple doctor,” I pointed out.
“You’re anything but simple,” Brody replied. “My price isn’t money.”
“Oh?”
“I will help you save Mary and her clan from idiocy tonight. In return, I want you to tell me about Taylor.”
“What about her?”
“Everything. Anything. Why you loved her. Why I did. What she said. All of it. Every breath she took.”
I stared at him. Fear was sitting on my shoulder, the product of human superstition. “Is that wise?” I asked, my voice weak. “Veris refuses to give you the information. What would I be setting in motion if I do?”
“I already know what she looks like, now,” Brody pointed out, his voice dropping lower just as mine had done. It was as if we both recognized we were meddling in things that should be left alone. “I only ask that you make her move and live for me.”
I recognized the need in him to know her. I could easily put myself in his boots and imagine what it would be like, to be told about a woman so wonderful an entire army mourned her passing, to be told at the same time I had loved her above all others, yet know nothing of her at all. The mystery, the need to understand such a pivotal event, had been driving Brody through two centuries, so far.
I admired Veris’ restraint. He had resisted Brody’s demands for hundreds of years. That gave me my answer.
“Yes, I’ll tell you about her,” I said.
Brody’s lips pressed against mine. Belatedly, dazedly, I realized he was kissing me.
I froze. My thoughts solidified, too. For the time his lips pressed against mine, I could only listen to my heart throwing itself wildly against my chest.
At the very last second, before he pulled away, a tiny voice whispered in my mind that a man’s kiss—this man’s kiss, at least—was not as objectionable as I had thought it would be.
Brody and I were of equal height, so his gaze was direct. Steady.
I cleared my throat. “Why…did you do that?”
“I think it was meant as a thank you,” Brody said. His voice was still low, but there was an additional quality to it that I recognized. Arousal. “It doesn’t just have to be for thanks,” he added.
I understood what he was offering. “You flatter me,” I told him honestly. “I know the quality of the man who awaits you when you return. You did not kiss me even as a thank-you, Brody and for that reason, I must decline.” I moved away from him, deliberately putting distance between us.
Brody did, too. He picked up the weapons and cloak on his chair and dumped them on the floor, then sat down. He did not look upset at my refusal. “What reason?” he asked curiously.
“Taylor,” I said simply. “I knew her. You do not. Seducing me would bring you closer to her, at least in your mind.”
Brody considered me for a long moment, his black eyes unreadable. “You would object to a time of pleasure because the reason for it is not to your taste?”
“I will not pursue Mary. I won’t agree to this for the same reason. I don’t love you, Brody. Not in that way. Besides, there is no room in your life for me. Veris does love you. In all ways and more deeply than I think he has revealed even to you.”
“So you will only dally with those who will consent to stay?” Brody asked curiously.
“I know that is an anathema to the long, long lives we live, yet it is a part of my faith. It is a part of me that existed before I was turned. I won’t give that up.”
Brody smiled. “Nor should you. Hold on to your principals, Alex. They appear to give you comfort and guidance, while I flail around like a beached fish with a tortured soul and no answers.” He pushed at the other big chair with his foot, shoving it a few inches. “Sit.”
“Why?”
“We have all the hours of daylight to pass before rescuing your Mary. You have time to tell me everything you know about Taylor.”