Page 100 of Bold Angel
It would be Caryn who tended to Geoffrey, Caryn who saw whether he lived or died. Caryn whose hands soothed the handsome knight’s lean hard body.
Ral’s stomach clenched at the thought.
***
“Dear God—Geoffrey!” Caryn rushed toward the men who carried the young man into the castle. “What’s happened? He is not… he is not dead?”
“Nay,” Ral said, “the lad still lives, though his injury is a grave one.”
She swallowed the bile that had risen in her throat at the sight of Geoffrey’s blood, and worked to slow her pounding heart.
“Bring him in here.” Her hands shook as she surveyed his pale face and seemingly lifeless body. The men carried their heavy burden into the room that servedas medicinal. Father Burton used it now that Hassan was gone. When she was needed, so did Caryn.
“Be careful of his shoulder.” Under her direction, the place had been kept neat and orderly, the bottles and jars she and the Arab had concocted still sat on a wooden table along one wall. “And bring me a pitcher of water.”
They laid him on a scrubbed wooden table and hurried to do her bidding as she removed the bloody wrappings from his wounds.
“Mother of God…”
“Aye, my lady,” Lambert said, “’twill take God’s sweet mercy to save ’im.”
Standing beside them, Hugh nervously twisted his hat. “’Twas as vicious a beast as I’ve e’er seen, milady.”
“Aye, that is clear.” Caryn dampened a cloth and began to cleanse the wound with an unsteady hand. “With an injury like this, there is certain to be an infection.” She shook her head. “He is pale as death itself. He has lost far too much blood.”
“’Tis a wonder he is not dead already,” Ral said, coming up beside her. “’Twas a difficult journey home.”
“’Twill be a difficult journey to recovery. I only pray that he will survive it.”
Ral made no comment, but his eyes searched her face in an uneasy manner and she wondered at his thoughts.
“There is naught you can do but what you have learned,” he finally said. “’Tis as much as anyone can ask.” Then he turned and walked away.
***
For seven long days, Caryn remained at Geoffrey’s bedside. She treated his scalp wound with sicklewort to stop the bleeding, wrapped it and changed the dressing often. In time she felt certain it would heal. The wound in his shoulder was another matter entirely.
The boar’s tusks had ripped into Geoffrey’s skin, leaving the opening torn and ragged, the fleshshades of deep purple and a fiery angry red. She let it bleed for a time, hoping to keep it from festering, but he had lost a great deal of blood already.
Caryn cleansed the wound often, using a solution of mandrake root mixed with lovage, but saw no sign of improvement. Even the poultices she made from Hassan’s special fungus could not draw out all the poison.
As Caryn had feared, fever overtook him. He shook with cold, though his skin was burning hot, then threw off the covers as his body raged with heat. Although the priest forbid it, Caryn ordered Geoffrey stripped, then bathed his feverish skin herself, determined to cool him as much as she could. She worried Ral might stop her, but he only stood by mutely, his back stiff, his expression carefully masked as the intimate task was completed.
Though Beltar had left Braxston Keep the day after the hunt and returned to his castle in the north, each time Ral entered the sickroom, he seemed more uneasy than before. Weariness etched new lines in his face, and it was obvious he hadn’t been eating. His worry seemed to grow with each passing day, both for Geoffrey and for herself.
“’Tis time you got some sleep,” he said one night as he strode toward her. “I will send Bretta to attend him.”
Caryn shook her head. “He grows weaker with every hour. I cannot leave him. ’Tis crucial that I stay.”
Ral rubbed his tired eyes, his handsome features marred by the same dark circles she knew marked her own. “What of the priest? Surely he knows enough to tend the boy.”
“Geoffrey is my friend. I will not risk his life for a few hours of sleep.”
Ral glanced down at the young blond knight whose face looked as pale as alabaster. Geoffrey dragged in rough, uneven, painfully shallow breaths. Watching him,Ral sighed with weary resignation. “I will see there is a cot set up in here.” And he left them once more alone.
During the night Geoffrey awoke her, rambling at first, then ranting and raving in a fit of building anger. He was speaking to his father, she realized, arguing that he would not fail in life as the older man had.
“I will be rich,” he whispered, his body thrashing from side to side. “I will take care of Mother as you never have.”
