NOAH SPEAKS

When I woke it was to discover that my flesh ached much less than I had anticipated, and that I could move more freely.

And that was as well, for I knew I could not linger here another day.

I could not survive another attack. I saw John watching me. “I feel well,” I said. “Do not fret.”

“I have been worried,” said John, and I could see that in his face, as well as in the rough edge to his voice.

This is why I needed to walk away from you, John…But, oh, if he had not been here with me. If Catling and I had been sheltering out the storm in some dismal tavern…

If Weyland had struck on the open road.

The “ifs” were too terrible to contemplate. I swear I have never been so grateful to have the company of a human being as I was for the company of John.

“Where is Catling?” I said, trying to inject some maternal concern into my voice.

“I sent her to sleep,” said Thornton. “She was worried for you.”

Worried? No, surely not. Concerned, maybe, but I doubt that worry came into it at all.

“Tell me,” I said, taking his hand as he sat by me on the bed, “how is it my back has healed so cleanly? The wounds are stiff, and ache, but they do not pain me greatly. Why is this so, John?”

“A physician came. Mistress Thanet sent him.”

I frowned. “A physician? An uncommonly good one, then.”

“Yes.”

Something in John’s face worried me. A flatness, both to his features and to his voice.

“What was his name?”

“I cannot remember. I was concerned for you, and that filled my thoughts.”

Perhaps, but strange nonetheless. I knew John’s intellectual capacity intimately; that he should not remember a name was highly unusual. “Describe this man to me,” I said.

John thought. “Well,” he said eventually, “he was tall, and pleasant enough. He had keen eyes, and…ah, I cannot remember.”

Tall, pleasant enough, and with keen eyes. It was not a description I could use to pick someone out from a crowd.

A horrible thought suddenly occurred to me. “John! Mistress Thanet thought only that I had a headache. What will she think now, when the physician tells her that he cured not my painful brow, but my mauled back?”

“Do not worry. He came so late at night that I doubt he went from this bedchamber to discuss the details of your condition with Leila.”

“But…” There were too many buts. Leila Thanet had sent for a physician but had not accompanied him into the chamber, at the very least to introduce him to John. And all this had occurred in the middle of the night. Leila Thanet may well have sent a servant riding for the physician if she thought there was some life-threatening emergency, but for all she knew I had only a painful headache.

And this strange, secretive physician with keen eyes had healed my back. At best, physicians soothed. They did not heal open and deep wounds. Not overnight.

Who?

I lay back thinking, and after only a moment the answer came to me. It must have been one of the Sidlesaghes, or even Charles, come from so far away in spirit. He would have been secretive, for he would not have wanted Weyland to know of his presence. I relaxed, relieved.

“There was one thing,” John said.

“Yes?”

He coloured slightly. “He asked if you brought me bliss in bed. He asked if you were, ahem, delectable.”

I stared. That surely was no question a Sidlesaghe would ask, and I could not imagine Charles asking it, either. Frankly, I couldn’t imagine who could have asked such an intimacy. “And what did you say?”

“I said you made the land to rise up and greet me.”

My throat choked with emotion and I had to swallow so that I might speak. “And he said?”

“He said nothing, but his eyes hardened, and he vanished.”

Not left. Vanished. I was still worried about this stranger’s identity, but at least my fears regarding Leila Thanet knowing the true nature of my affliction eased. This was, most certainly, not someone Leila Thanet had summoned.

I smiled at John, and squeezed his hand. “What this physician did was as nothing to what you have done for me over the past days and nights. If not for you…John, if not for you then I should be in despair. Despair cannot be healed as easily with power as can a few torn wounds. What you have done for me takes something far greater than the mere application of an unnatural power. I thank you.”

He gave a nod, and a small smile, but he did not say anything, and I knew he had wanted so much more from me.

In the morning we rose, dressed, breakfasted, then took our leave of the Thanets (most apparently completely unaware of the physician’s visit), and rode the fifteen miles or so south-east into London.

To Weyland Orr.

At one point, a mile or so south of Langley Hall, John reined the horse to a halt, and said to me, “Noah, is London the safest place for you? And this…this creature within you…dear God, beloved…how can I—”

“John,” I said, “be at peace. This woman I go to, Jane Orr, she is afflicted in the same manner as I. Individually we have no hope, but together we can overcome this dark trouble. I know it, and so does she. And I have many other friends in London. Marguerite and Kate shall join me soon, as yet others. Deliver me you must, and then you must leave me. If you do that, then one day I shall return, carefree and unburdened. If you do not, then I am lost.”

“But you will never love me,” he said.

I said nothing, and dropped away my eyes.