Knight Triumphant. Heather Graham

paused by the mantel at last, staring into the fire.

      Igrainia sank into the chair by her bedside, watching Margot.

      She kept that vigil through the night.

      When morning came, she stretched, having fallen into a doze in the chair. The woman still breathed.

      The Scotsman was still standing by the fire. She doubted that he had taken a minute’s sleep, all through the night.

      Igrainia touched Margot’s lips gently, then rose and told Eric, “She is still with us. I need more kindling for the fire. And now, we must get some more plain, cool water past her lips. If you would help me here . . . please.”

      He turned away from the mantel where he had leaned. His color had gone from the ruddy glow of health to the pale ash of illness.

      “Tell me what I must do.”

      His voice rasped. It seemed he would walk to her, but could not manage to make his legs move.

      Igrainia gasped, staring at him, then walked instinctively his way.

      “You are about to—”

      Even as she neared him, the great power of the man gave way, and his imperious length of muscle, sinew and strength went crashing to the floor.

      She came to a halt, wincing.

      Then she froze, waiting to see if he would move.

      He did not.

      She came to her knees at his side. His eyes were closed. They opened briefly, a deep, dark blue. He moved his lips to speak but no sound came. He reached out. His long fingers fell short of touching her face. His eyes closed once again.

      Igrainia hesitated, then laid her fingers against the ashen flesh of his face.

      His flesh burned with a heat like the fires of hell.

      He wielded no power over any man then.

      CHAPTER 3

      He could hear his wife’s voice.

      Her tone crystalline and soft, a whisper that came to him, brushing his ear. She moved about him, telling him that he must drink, sip cool water. He seemed to live the days when the sea breezes were strong against him and the world was shaded in the blue of the sky and the kiss of the cool air. Then there was darkness. He would waken, and think again that she was near, and that he could feel the silken brush of her hair against his flesh.

      There were times when he knew that his wife was dead. No woman, no witch, no healer, could have brought her back, just as his babe was gone. His child, who had been everything tender and sweet in a world of steel and blood. She had been a shimmering ray of innocence, so small. She came to him in his dreams, fingers curled in those of her mother, and they walked to him together, beckoning, and he would follow. He heard his daughter’s melodic laughter, and the music of Margot’s voice as she so gently chastised and taught. There had been such wonder in holding Aileen when she came into the world, his hands so big and calloused against the purity of her flesh. He seemed to live again the time when he shook, holding her, and heard Margot’s voice. “You would have liked a son.”

      “One day, not now; she is beautiful beyond measure, she is . . . mine. My flesh, my blood, so beautiful . . . so tiny!”

      “That is how they come into the world, my lord. She is not so tiny for a babe; she merely seems so to you.”

      “She’ll be tall, as you are.”

      “Light, dear husband, as we both are.”

      “Her eyes . . . they are the sky.”

      “She will be beautiful,” Margot agreed a bit unwillingly, for part of her own charm was an amazing humility, and she would never have a child grow into the world with too great a sense of pride. “And you will think her far too good for any man when she comes of age to marry.”

      “I will keep them all away. Especially . . . well, men like me,” he admitted, and his own words were humble then, because she had loved him with such loyalty and for so many years before he had made her his wife. Yet once they had married he had realized, in the midst of a world filled with never-ending warfare and bloodshed, that she was a beacon of life. Few men found a life’s companion to love with such passion and strength.

      And still, she stood before him now, fingers touching him, cooling his brow. Yet even so . . . her image wavered. Again, he knew that she was gone. With their child. He opened his eyes. Darkness hovered over him. The hair that brushed his flesh was not the color of the sun on a summer’s day, wheat reflected with a glow of light, gold shimmering against the day.

      Black. There was a black-haired witch hovering over him. He wanted to move an arm to push her away. He could not. He stared at her, then again, his eyes closed, and it seemed the world burned around him, fires blazing through a forest.

      He moved his lips.

      “Witch.”

      “You mustn’t push me away. The cold cloths must stay on your head.”

      “Darkness . . . witch.”

      “If you keep pushing me away, you will die.”

      Death would be easy, he thought. He could reach out for Margot, for the faded image in his dreams, take her hand. Fade with her, and their little daughter, from the world.

      “My wife . . .”

      “Lie still.”

      “She is . . . gone . . . I know.”

      The black-haired serpent did not answer him.

      Aye, Margot was gone.

      He managed to catch hold of the woman, his fingers curling around her wrist. “My wife, like my child, is dead.”

      She drew away. He hadn’t the strength to hold her.

      “You should let him die!” someone whispered.

      “We cannot let any man die. That we will all eventually pass from our lives on earth is certain, but whether we are so evil as to spend eternity in Hell has yet to be determined,” came a dry and sardonic reply. “We can’t let any man die.”

      “He is why we are all dying!”

      “I don’t believe the Scots asked to be captured and dragged in for humiliation and execution without trial.”

      “There, you have said it! He was to be executed!”

      “But not by my judgment!”

      “You would save him at great risk for the king to order his execution!”

      “I say again, we cannot simply let any man die—”

      “He is not a man. He is a monster. A follower of the treacherous betrayer, Bruce. Their king would be king by murdering his enemies! He was intended for death. And he is dangerous—alive. You waste your time. He will live and kill us all.”

      They were gone then.

      Perhaps to let him die.

      He determined then that he would live.

      In the week that followed, it seemed that the closed community of stricken and ill—the English, the Scottish who were still loyal to Edward and against the coronation of Robert Bruce, and the Scottish patriots—worked together in pleasant harmony. For once, they were all fighting a common enemy, one with no face except for that of the threat of death.

      There was a great discussion between Igrainia and Father MacKinley regarding the bodies of the wife and child of the Scotsman. For the woman had died within a day of her husband falling ill, and the child’s body, ravaged by the illness, had set quickly into decay. They should have been burned on one of the large pyres set each day just beyond the courtyard walls. But since the man himself rallied and lingered, they were fearful of his wrath should he live.

      Igrainia