The Wanderer and the Way 14
The Quick and the Slow
This is Chapter 14 of The Wanderer and the Way. The full book is now available for preorder on Amazon for release on March 10.
Hathus called the first halt of the day in a lonely place, and there he transferred Agnes from Theodemir’s horse to one of the carts which was relatively lightly laden. He cut some tender branches from a nearby sapling and bound them together to form a kind of cage, over which he draped a blanket to shade Anges’s head from the sun. He made it very clear to Theodemir that he had taken custody of Agnes, and after he had laid her down in the cart he again licked the back of his hand and held it to her nose and mouth, then turned and looked grimly at Theodemir.
The soldiers all came and looked on Agnes and whispered among themselves their astonishment at her beauty. One was delegated to ask Hathus about her, but he was sent off with a short answer. These men knew their commander well, and the regard he had for young women, all of whom were daughters in his eyes. None of them approached Theodemir or said a word about her to him. He was in their eyes the villain of the piece, and he had to sit seething in silent anxiety all through the stop and through the weary miles that followed until Hathus again called a halt for the midday meal by a small stream, set about with trees. Here Hathus carried Agnes down to the water, laid her down in the shade of a willow, and bathed her cheeks and forehead with the cool water. Through all this, Theodemir stood apart. The men would not come near him, and Hathus’s grim visage forbade him to approach Agnes. If he had killed her, he asked himself, was that better than leaving her to be raped and beaten by Witteric until she submitted to him and became like Fatima or Sakina? And if he had not killed her, would she forgive him for taking her out of Witteric’s power and separating her from her sisters? And if she did not, could he rest easy in his conscience for performing the rescue, even if she never forgave him for it? And would Hathus forgive him if she died? And if she died, would Hathus avenge her?
After washing her face with cold water, which failed to wake her, Hathus ordered two of his men to stand guard over Agnes. Theodemir well understood who they were guarding her against. Hathus ordered a small fire lit, then he went about the river bank gathering wild plants which he set smoldering in the fire and held under Agnes’s nose, holding her in an upright position with one strong arm as he did so. Still Agnes did not wake, and Hathus, grim-faced, threw the smoldering herbs into the stream and came to Theodemir.
“What was in that draught you gave her?” he demanded.
“I don’t know,” Theodemir said. “I got it as a compound from a man who was recommended to me.”
“Have you more of it?”
“No. I gave her the whole dose.”
“Well, I think you’ve killed her.”
“She’s dead?”
“There is still a faint breath in her, but she does not wake.”
“She would not come away, but if I had left her, my uncle would have raped her and beaten her, day by day, until he had beaten all the will out of her, then made her a concubine to share with his friends.”
“I’d have killed him,” Hathus said bluntly and earnestly.
“I could not,” Theodemir said. He knew in that moment that Hathus would certainly have killed Witteric if faced with such a dilemma, and he cursed himself for his cowardly conscience.
“So he lives, and she dies,” the captain said.
“Do not let her die,” Theodemir begged.
“She’ll not die of my neglect,” Hathus said. “But if she does not wake by nightfall, I think there will be no breath in her by morning.”
He turned and walked off then, leaving Theodemir staring desperately at the spot where Agnes lay still beneath the willow, guarded by two men who, to judge by their faces, longed for him to attempt to approach her so that they might exact their revenge on him.
They sat around their fires at the close of a long and aching day’s ride that had had all the character of a funeral procession. Every man, from Hathus to his soldiers to the men who drove the donkey carts, was in deepest mourning as if they had lost their fondest child. But then, just as the most hopeful of them had given up expecting it, Agnes did, at last, awaken. She was lying where Hathus had placed her on the gently sloping bank of a stream, with a fire crackling close beside her. Suddenly she gasped and coughed and began to vomit. She was not sufficiently awake or command of her limbs to roll onto her side, and if not for the vigilance of Hathus, who was at her side in a moment and clearing her mouth with his fingers, she would certainly have drowned in her vomit. But Hathus held her with her head down and whispered assurance as she cleared her belly with the most terrible wretched vomiting.
Theodemir, who had been staring moodily at the first stars of evening flickering in the bubbling water of the stream, leapt up at the sound and ran towards where Agnes lay. But three of Witteric’s men saw him and blocked his way.
“You’re not to go near her till she gives leave,” one of them said. It must have been Hathus’s order, yet the man said it as if it were his own injunction which he would be eager for the chance to enforce with his fists or his blade.
Theodemir did not argue or protest but tried to look past the men, over their shoulders, to assure himself that Agnes would survive her retching. At last, the terrible noise of it ceased, and Hathus, cradling the girl like a baby, slowly urged a little water over her lips, and then bathed her forehead and cheeks again. Through all this, Agnes never spoke, and Theodemir was too far away to see what was in her face. At last, Hathus laid her down and covered her with a blanket, and when he rose, it was plain that she was sleeping.
Hathus set two men to guard her, and the rest gathered round, eager for news of her. When Theodemir tried to join them, they joined shoulders to block his path, but Hathus barked an order to let him through and was at once obeyed.
“Will she live?” the men demanded. To a man, they were in love with her.
“Some poisons are quick, some slow,” Hathus said. “She has survived the quick. She is young, and healthy enough, though a little thin, and should recover from that. But we do not know everything she was given. The herbalist who made the surgeon’s draught was a fool or a charlatan by my reckoning. The poison is out of her stomach at least, but there are slow poisons that may be in her still and may still harm her. She sleeps now, and we will not move her again until she wakes naturally.”
“And if she does not wake?” one asked.
“I think she will wake,” Hathus said. “But her danger will not be past for many days.” And then he ordered some men to watch along the road and some to watch Agnes.
“We should bind him to a wheel while we sleep,” one man said of Theodemir.
“We will not bind the king’s ambassador,” Hathus said. “But you, young man,” he added, pointing at Theodemir, “shall not approach her until she admits you with the words of her own mouth.”
“I entrust her to your care, sir,” Theodemir said. “You have done more for her than I would have known to do, and if she lives, it will be because of your care. I thank you for it, and I accept your injunction. I will go now and pray for her, and for you as well.” And after that he went off by himself to a place out of sight of the rest, knelt down on the banks of the stream, and wept until sleep overwhelmed him.
When he awoke in the morning and made his way back into camp, he saw that Agnes had already awakened and was sitting up beside the stream while Hathus urged sips of buttermilk upon her. The soldiers were gathered around but standing back a few paces, like shy suitors around the prettiest lass at the harvest dance. He advanced as far as the surrounding men would permit. Agnes turned her head and saw him. Her face looked terribly ill and weary, and there was little expression in it. Hathus said a word to her quietly, and she shook her head. The men nearest to him, understanding the gesture, immediately turned and blocked Theodemir from advancing further. He turned away, fell to his knees, and offered up the prayers that he had promised to make the previous night before tears and sleep had overcome him.
All through their morning’s travel, Agnes lay in the cart, her head covered by the blanket-covered cage that Hathus had so cunningly devised to shade her. When they stopped at noon, she climbed down from the wagon herself but then found her feet unsteady and clung to the side of the cart until Hathus came and offered her an arm to guide her. Other men were closer, but all understood that she was in Hathus’s care, and Hathus would have none attend her but himself. There was some small glimmer of satisfaction for Theodemir in this that he was not the only man denied her company, though he did feel that he had more right to it than any other, Hathus included. But he was also certain that Hathus would kill for her without a thought to the consequences for his body or his soul. He asked himself with wonder if Agnes was as adept at attracting fatherly affection as she was at winning the love of young men who wished to be her husband. Carefully he approached one of the soldiers, one who had seemed least ardent among his fellows to bruise Theodemir’s head or spill his blood.
“Is he as protective of every young woman he meets?” he asked the man.
The soldier looked at him sourly but answered, “He has five daughters. The one he loved best was taken by the Moors. You can imagine how they will have used her.”
“I’m sorry,” Theodemir said, as if the fault of this were his, as the soldier somehow seemed to suggest.
“Why did you poison her?” the soldier said roughly.
“The draught was only meant to make her sleep,” Theodemir protested.
“So that you could take her against her will,” the soldier said. “Who is she that you should use her so?”
“She is the daughter of an Anglish thegn, captured by a Northman and brought here as his wife.”
“You stole her from him? She did not want to go with you, or you would not have needed to drug her. This is bad business.”
“The Northman is dead, with all his crew,” Theodemir said. “Their wives will be made slaves and concubines. I took her to save her, but she wanted to remain with the others whom I could not save.”
“A likely tale,” the soldier said. And then, remembering that he was addressing the king’s ambassador, he said, “If you’ll pardon my saying it, sir.”
“She is my vocation,” he said, imagining as he said it that this would make his tale seem more probable. “I had a vision from God as I stood in the church of Santa Maria in Iria Flavia. God has instructed me to dedicate my life to her service.”
“I reckon there’s many men as thinks the same of themselves,” the soldier said. “I don’t know what it is about her. She’s a beauty alright. But there’s more than that. There’s not a man in this company whose not in love with her and would not lay down his life for her. And I’m the same way, though I know it for folly, and I’ve a wife at home as I’m happy with, as most of us do. But that one puts a collar ’round a man’s neck just looking at her.”
“You are right about that,” Theodemir responded. “She put that collar on my neck too, the day I came home to my uncle’s villa and she opened the gate for me and washed my feet and tended my wounds. I loved her from that moment. But this was something else. I heard her voice ringing through the sanctuary, though she was a mile away. God spoke to me in the church and committed me to her service. But if God’s purpose was that I should marry her, I do not know. I hope for it and pray for it, but if it is so, God gives me no sign, and nor does she.”
“Well, you’ve a strange way of courting, sir,” the soldier said. “I’m not thinking she’ll look on you with much favor now, supposing she lives.”
The truth of this was not lost on Theodemir. “If I had not done it,” he said, “I should have let her be broken and made a whore. Then she would have been lost to me forever, and I should certainly have failed God’s commission, for whatever He may intend for her, whatever I am supposed to do in her cause, it cannot be that.”
“Well, you’ve saved her for another, to my way of thinking,” the soldier said.
“Another such as you?” Theodemir asked bitterly.
“I don’t much think so,” the soldier replied vexedly. He moved off, leaving Theodemir smarting at his own truculence. He was hardly in a position to be snapping off an olive branch when it was extended to him. He was beginning to think that this trip to Aachen was going to be as lonely as his trip from Rome, even if it would be conducted with a little more comfort and safety.
In the afternoon, Agnes asked if she could ride. Hathus tried to talk her out of it, fearing that she might fall, but Agnes insisted, and so a horse was chosen for her from the caravan’s spare mounts—Theodemir’s offer of his own spare horse was rejected brusquely. She rode for about an hour, and each of the soldiers rode by and saluted her. As the afternoon grew hot, however, she begged for a halt and had to be helped down from the saddle and placed in the cart once again.
When the heat of the afternoon faded, however, Agnes perked up, and her old charm and liveliness returned. There was even a hint of Elswyth about her as she sat by the fire and sang for the men, all of whom, besotted, gathered around her, eyes shining in the light of the fire. She lay down to sleep in the midst of them, in the place that they insisted she take next to the fire, while Theodemir, the king’s ambassador and the sole reason for the caravan’s existence, was told by closed backs and stony stares that his place was far from the fire. They slept in a ring around her, making a wall with their bodies with her within and Theodemir without.
But in the morning when they woke, Agnes was gone.
The Wanderer and the Way is now available for preorder on Amazon for release on March 10.
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