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She tossed back her hair and bit her lip. It was probably sinful to hold a grudge against one with a special relationship with God, but he was so rude today, she felt justified in ignoring him.
He had settled the group early for the night. After the evening meal, Sister Marian gathered the pilgrims into a mismatched choir. It was strange to hear singing that did not echo on stone. But Sister Marian, her clear voice praising God with each note, led them with enthusiasm, even for the Widow, whose deaf ear let her sing happily in her own rhythm. At least when she was singing, she wasn’t talking.
“Your faith gives you wings to fly like Larina
To fly like Larina, to fly like Larina;
Your faith gives you wings to fly like Larina
Into the arms of the Lord.”
Dominica hummed along, tapping one foot, happily reminded why she was here and what she would find at the end of her journey: a sign from God that she could go home.
She counted the singers. Sir Garren was not among them, nor were Simon and Ralf. Perhaps he was standing guard with them.
She felt a shield at her back, blocking the wind, and turned. Sir Garren loomed behind her, tall and straight as a tree. “You do not join the singing?”
Her throat clutched the hum. She was not going to speak to him. She was not certain she could speak to him. But he had asked her a direct question. She had to say something. “Singing is not my talent. Mother Julian has always been clear about that.”
A frown creased his brow. Everything she said brought a frown. He smiled at Sister. He even smiled at Innocent. What was it about her that made him frown? “You dislike singing?” she ventured.
“I dislike announcing our presence to thieves.”
A gust of wind rustled the ragged oak leaves behind her. Hand-shaped shadows waved along the ground. Dominica swallowed. Thieves. Something new to fear. Bravery had been easy when, sheltered by cloistered walls, all she had to fear was Mother Julian. “God protects pilgrims.” And it is your task to protect us, she thought.
He opened his mouth and then shut it with a deliberate smile. “Don’t worry.” He brushed a lock of hair back from her forehead. She shivered at the touch of his fingers, yet she felt reassured. “We are still close to William’s land.”
At least he had not frowned.
This time, however, she would not speak. Ignoring him, she looked back at the singers and hummed through closed lips waiting for him to go away.
He stayed. Back straight as a soldier, he stood so close to her she could sense the rise and fall of his chest. She wondered whether it were covered by the same dark brown hair as his fingers, scolding herself for the thought. Even if he were no saint, she should not think of him as a man. Nuns never thought of men that way.
She jumped when he spoke again, his voice soft somewhere above her left ear. “I must ask your forgiveness. I spoke like the rudest peasant instead of a chivalrous knight.”
Refusing to look at him, she kept her gaze on the fire, hoping he could not see her satisfied smile. “I know little of chivalry.”
Large, warm hands cupped her shoulders. He turned her, gently, but firmly, to face him. Firelight flickered over his face, softening the rough edge of his chin and the harsh lines around his eyes. “I am sorry. I have no excuse for ill treatment of another.”
She chose her words carefully, trying to resist the pleading look in his eyes. “It is not my place to judge a man who is one of God’s messengers.”
His chest rose with an inheld breath, as if he were ready to berate her again, but sighed instead. “At least you are no longer calling me The Savior.” He shook his head. “Life treats us ill enough. We should be kind to each other.”
Sorrow lurked in his voice. Chagrined, she regretted her petty game. He preached kindness, just as the Savior did. And practiced it, too. She had seen it in his care of Sister and all of them. He had asked for forgiveness. Surely she could forgive ill manners. “I forgive you.”
Some of the pain behind his eyes dissolved. “Thank you.”
She couldn’t look away. Her chest rose and fell with his, and she had a strange, dizzy sensation that they breathed as one person.
Behind her, the singing dissolved in laughter. She stepped away from him and looked back at the fire.
He cleared his throat. “Why don’t you talk now?”
She did not want to talk to him. She did not want to stand near him. She did not want to feel so shaky and uncertain. She filled her chest with air, relieved that her breath was her own again. “I am not experienced with talking. At the Priory, we speak only with permission.” No need to tell him she didn’t always wait for permission.
“I give you permission.” It sounded more like a command.
What did he want of her? She turned and let her words fly without planning. “What should I say? I am not to speak of your eyes or your home and family or the war or God. I cannot speak of my travels, because I have none.”
Now he was the one who kept his eyes on the fire, refusing to face her. The singers started a round, and completed the three parts. Still, he did not answer. For a man who wanted to talk, it seemed to come no more easily to him than to her. “Tell me of your life at the Priory,” he said, finally.
She smiled, happy to talk of home. “I tend the garden, do the wash, clean.” No scowls this time. A determined smile carved his face. Should she tell him about her writing?
A cold, wet nose nudged her ankle. She picked up Innocent, burying her nose in his fur, smelling the unfamiliar earth he had explored. “And I feed the dog.” He washed her face with a scratchy tongue. “Find any turnips, boy?”
Sir Garren scratched behind the shaggy black ear and Innocent busied his tongue with the broad palm instead of Dominica’s face. Laughing, she turned back to The Savior, or whoever he was. “Did you have a dog as a child?”
“I don’t remember.”
At first she thought that he didn’t want to speak of his childhood. Then, the puzzlement in his voice hit her ear.
He could not remember. This was a man who had not been a child for a long, long time.
She watched in wonder as he patiently let Innocent’s pink tongue clean every one of his fingers. “How came you to know Lord William?” she asked, finally.
“He took me as his squire when I was seventeen.”
“Seventeen? A knight’s training begins as a child.”
“I had much to learn. My training was…interrupted.” The words came through lips narrowed by a harsh life.
“Interrupted by what?”
“I had just left the monastery.”
A shudder chilled her spine. Had he broken his vows? Was he an outcast monk? “Were you defrocked?”
“I was just completing my novice year. I had not taken my vows.” A haunted look lurked about his eyes. “All I could offer was a rusty sword arm, not even a sword.”
He gave me a new life, he said of the Earl of Readington, with the fierce loyalty men normally reserve for God. Even she knew how generous the Earl had been to take on a penniless, ill-trained squire. “Why did you leave the monastery?”
He was silent while the crackling fire shot a shower of sparks into the twilight sky, blue as if it had been ground from azurite. The first star blinked. “This was after the Death,” he said, finally.
She crossed herself. He had not answered, but she understood. Many strange events had come upon the land seized by that terror almost ten years ago. God had nearly destroyed the world. She still did not understand how the comforting God who spoke to her could let such a plague loose upon his people. “God punished us so harshly. We must strive to do his will each day so tomorrow will not bring such a punishment again.”
He shook his head. “We must strive to enjoy today because God may snatch us away before tomorrow comes.”
“But if He does, there’s a reason. There is always a reason for God’s plan.”
“Can you explain it?”
She searched his eyes, wondering whether God had sent him to test her faith. There must be words she could say to convince him of the rightness of God’s plan. “Sola fide.”
“What?”
He did not understand her Latin. She must have mispronounced the words. “By faith alone.”
Light from the fire flickered over his face. Shadows from his strong brows concealed his eyes. “You really believe that, don’t you?”
“Don’t you?”
The Miller brothers, one with a low voice and one higher, filled the silence with their harmonies. Faith is a trap for fools, he had said, this man who saved people but walked away from God.
“I believe,” he whispered, staring at the fire, “that we owe each other more than we owe God.”
She realized she had not breathed, waiting for his answer.
Day One: Faire weather. Walked until vespers. Pleasant land.
Lip out, Dominica watched the morning sun spill pink over the horizon. One sheet of paper lay atop a rock. Her letters, small and tight, filled the precious page edge to edge, as she’d been taught.
But were they the right words?
Just one day away from the Priory, she was farther away from home than she had ever been. She could not even name the place they had slept. Everything was fresh and unseen and untried and she was exhausted with the newness of it all.
The cheeping sparrows hopped close enough to touch. She must enjoy this time. These days. Write them down so she could remember later. When she would never be able even to speak of them without permission.
She wanted to write about how funny Innocent had looked chasing the rabbit and the way the young married couple walked holding hands and that she was worried about how tired Sister had seemed last night.
She wanted to write about him.
She dipped the quill into the ink and tapped out the excess.
Smooth straight path. Slept under stars.
Stars. How inadequate. Thousands and thousands of tiny candle flames lit by God. She could hardly bear to shut her eyes for the wonder of sleeping under such a ceiling.
She added a word. Many.
She frowned at her stingy parchment, a rescraped and reused scrap no one wanted any more, not good enough to copy God’s words. She had room for only a word or two to help her remember later.
What word would she choose for him?
The Savior was too blasphemous. Garren too personal.
The Man, she wrote.
She stared in horror, then struck through the words, blunting the point of her quill, hiding them with an ugly black blot, wishing she could blot them out of her mind.
He must be more than a man. For if he were only a man, she might be only reacting to him as a woman.
Alone in the shelter of the small grove before the day’s journey began, Garren thought about his plan. He did not know whether it was a good one.
He took the tarnished, dented silver reliquary from around his neck. Unwrapping the scrap of leather tied around it, he pulled apart the slender, silver tube. Inside, he had hidden three goose down feathers he would exchange for feathers from the shrine. Somehow. When no one was looking.
He thought again of just giving William the goose down. After all, there must be enough true feathers of the Blessed Larina to fly to heaven. Most relics were frauds. William would never know.
But a promise made to William bound him more tightly than an oath made to God.
A branch snapped and he pulled his dagger.
Dominica stood transfixed, staring at the feathers nestled in their white linen shroud. The skin behind her freckles paled. Then, she looked at him, blue eyes so piercing he feared she could see him plucking the goose down from the aviary dust.
“It is a blessed feather from Saint Larina’s wings,” she whispered. “The wings God gave her.”
Well, what harm would it do to a girl who already believed sola fide. She must not know his real plans. “Yes, yes it is.” He lifted a finger to his lips. “But you must tell no one.” He rocked the feather as if it were a precious child. “I’m to deliver it to the shrine, but the fewer who know, the better. You understand.”
Her blue eyes, already wide and round, grew larger. Both eyebrows lifted. One, he noticed, arched like a bird’s wing. The other ended as if the wing had been broken. “Where did you find it?” Her whisper’s echo turned the grove into a chapel.
“I am not free to tell you.” he intoned, mimicking a priestly monotone. “You understand.”
She smiled with a sigh that sounded like relief. “I knew you were special the minute I saw you in the Prioress’s office. I had a warm feeling, like when I pray in front of the stained glass window.”
I had a warm feeling too, he thought, but it had nothing to do with prayer.
She uttered some Latin words, solemnly.
He blinked and nodded, trying to look as if he were striving to remember the exact chapter and verse she recited. Even at the monastery, he had been a poor student.
“That’s ‘Give all honor to God’s messenger,’” she said, with a self-satisfied grin. “I wrote that one.”
“You what?”
“Well, sometimes, I put the words together into sayings of my own.” She ducked her head. “Please correct me if I get it wrong.”
He nodded, sagely. No reason for her to know the limitations of his Latin.
He nodded to the cloth. “You must tell no one about the feathers,” he said. No need to spread another fable about his special link with God.
She peered at them, but kept her hands behind her back. “A relic carries all the power of the saint. It can work a miracle.”
Miracles. The girl believed in miracles. “Have you ever witnessed a miracle like that?”
“I know all the stories.”
“What if they are only stories?”
“How can you ask that?”
