Helewise stood there indecisively for just long enough to realise that there was someone there with her, and then his hands were around her waist.
‘I think you should dress this way all the time,’ he breathed in her ear.
‘John Crayford, if I catch one whiff of giant on you-’ she muttered. When he tried to kiss her, she ducked her head and slipped through his arms, but she caught his hand and pulled him into the yard. ‘Where’s your squire?’ she asked.
‘In the gatehouse,’ he breathed in her ear. ‘I kept the barn for myself.’
She put her arms around his neck. ‘Was it bad?’ she asked.
‘Better now,’ he said. He lifted her and carried her into the barn.
Father Arnaud sat in the hall and sipped from a cup of wine. His hands were shaking.
Sister Amicia came and sat by him. ‘Can I help?’
He smiled at her. ‘You are the famous Soeur Sauvage?’ He rose and bowed. ‘No one told me you were so pretty,’ he added.
‘Are you sure you’re a priest?’ she asked. But she grinned, and he had to grin back.
He drank more wine. ‘I’m good at killing monsters,’ he said. ‘Pardon me, ma soeur. I am suffering a crisis of faith.’ He turned his head. ‘Why on earth did I just tell you that?’
She shrugged. ‘People tell me things like that all the time. I suppose I’m easy to talk to – being pretty, and all.’ She sat opposite him, seized a dirty cup and poured wine into it. ‘I’m in a perpetual crisis of faith myself, though, so I’m of no help to you.’
He sat back. ‘Mayhap I could argue that if you have many crises of faith, you must also resolve them often, and thus you are my fittest guide.’ He looked away.
‘What’s the matter?’ she asked.
‘I couldn’t heal. I haven’t been able to because-’ He paused and looked away.
They sat silently for a bit, because he was crying, and she knew better than to interrupt. After a little while, she said a prayer and then handed him her plain white handkerchief.
He dried his eyes. ‘Sorry,’ he muttered. ‘I don’t want to be a sop. I am simply so tired of failure.’
She watched him, waiting, listening.
But he surprised her by turning with a wry smile. ‘And you, ma soeur? Why your crises of faith?’
She shrugged. She had little interest in discussion or confession; she knew her sin, and talking about it would only make her feel more vulnerable.
On the other hand, he’d confided in her.
‘I’m in love,’ she said. Even saying the word gave her a jolt, like touching a sacred relic.
His smile sharpened. ‘Ah – love,’ he said. He drank off his wine, and his hands shook.
She couldn’t tell whether that was bitterness or not. ‘Has anyone asked if you killed the giants?’ she asked.
‘Oh, yes. Both dead. Two of God’s creatures, as innocent as babes, and we killed them.’ He raised his eyes.
They were empty and hard for a moment. And then they softened, and he wrinkled his mouth – a particular tick. ‘Bah, I am too talkative. Lift my vow of silence and I ramble on and on.’
She got up and stretched. ‘You don’t seem especially talkative to me, ser priest. But I think I’m too tired to drink any more.’
‘Who is it?’ he asked. ‘Who do you love?’
She shook her head. ‘It’s not important. He’s not around, so I cannot err.’ She was quite proud of how light her voice sounded.
‘I fell in love with a lady.’ Father Arnaud raised his eyes. ‘I ruined her life. I was proud and vain, and our love was a gift from God. Even now, I’m not sure that I repent it.’ He swirled the wine in his cup. ‘Isn’t it interesting that God can cut me off from the power to heal, but my strong right arm can continue killing? Despite my sin?’
She sat down with a thump. ‘So far, it sounds like you are more interested in being a romantic hero in a troubadour song than in being a good man. Despite which I promise you, ser priest, that the only thing that stands between you and healing is yourself.’
They sat for a moment, glaring at each other.
He shook his head, wrinkling his mouth again. ‘Sometimes our situations resemble the best troubadour songs. That’s why we love them, is it not? And yet – and yet, I feel a pang of something at your words, and you anger me, and that is good. I have considered that my limitations on casting must come from within me, like some kind of amnesia. But there is nothing there.’
She reached out a hand. ‘Let me look,’ she said.
He shook his head. ‘No – pardon me, ma soeur, but you are too puissant for me. I will go and do my duty, and perhaps God and I will come to be friends again.’ He got up. ‘The worst of love is the change in habit – you know that? Years of celibacy, and now all that is overturned. I see you as a woman, not a sister. I see women all around me.’
‘Not altogether a curse,’ she said. ‘Might it not be better if some of our order lived and worshipped with yours?’
He laughed. ‘It would certainly alter our convents,’ he said.
She crossed her arms. ‘I’m cold. Good night to you, Father.’
He watched her climb the stairs, and then he poured himself a cup of wine, and later he prayed his beads and cried.
The next day, when the wounded men were stable and the dead man was buried, the priest took his leave.
Crayford embraced him. ‘You are a fine man of arms, Father,’ he said. ‘I wish you were staying. Where are you headed?’
Father Arnaud was booted and spurred and had a warm cloak over his arm. He bowed to the Lady of Middlehill. ‘Thanks for your hospitality, my lady,’ he said.
She curtsied. ‘May I ask your blessing, Father?’ she asked.
‘You need no blessing beyond the presence of Sister Amicia,’ he said. But he held out his hand and blessed her, and her daughter, and all the manor.
‘Where are you headed, Father?’ asked Ser John.
‘Over the mountains to Morea,’ the priest replied. ‘I’m off to be the chaplain to the Red Knight.’ He said it lightly enough, but Ser John’s brow darkened and the nun put her hand to her throat. The ring on her finger seemed to flash in the autumn sun. ‘I gather he needs a chaplain. Perhaps I’ll even reform him,’ he said.
Ser John shook his head. ‘You won’t. For an upstart sprig of nobility, he’s a fine fighter. Nor any worse than any other sellsword. But he stripped me of my best men-at-arms in the late spring, and now he gets you as well. Despite which, send him my regards.’
Sister Amicia coughed. ‘And mine, Father.’
‘You know him, I gather,’ said the priest. He vaulted onto his horse.
She nodded. ‘I do,’ she said.
When the priest was gone, Sister Amicia thought, There goes a man who thinks me a pious hypocrite. And who is too intelligent for his own good. They’ll get along famously. She sighed, clamped down on her regrets, and got on with her work.
Chapter Nine
Ticondaga Castle – Ghause Muriens
Ghause spent more time on research than she had done since she was very young, reading her mother’s books and her grandmother’s grimoire again and again. Even as the days grew colder and wetter, and her husband’s sword punished the Outwallers harder and tried to enforce his notions of peace among the Huran, she read and read, and then began one of the most complicated castings she’d ever designed.
The work began with an elaborate array of diagramata written in silver lead on the slate floor of her work chamber, high above the stone flags of the castle courtyard. The working was so dense that it required a kind of application that she normally forbore. She hated both research and diagramata, preferring to make up for each with simple power – power that she had had from birth.
But this was not a matter for power. This was a matter for subtlety.