Her attention was drawn back to Valentine and the liveryman by the clinking of coins. Valentine had a distasteful expression on his face as he pulled the strings of his purse tight and began unlooping his bags from his saddle.
Mary jumped as a series of barking shouts sounded near her left side, and she turned, her hand pressed to her chest, to see the swarthy horseman glaring at her and gesturing to the street.
“My God, what does he want?” Mary asked through a strangled throat.
“He would like for you to please dismount now, Maria,” Valentine said, glancing up. His brow lowered and he came around the front of the mounts, his arm out, pointing to the man and shouting in the guttural-sounding tongue.
The man grumbled something in return, and Mary gasped as Valentine drew a knife from his boot faster than she could blink and held it before the man’s nose. The two shared a quiet private conversation and then the liveryman held up both hands with a grin and backed a pair of paces away.
“Today, Maria?” Valentine asked over his shoulder. “Before I am forced to let this man’s blood and we must defend ourselves against the entire town.”
Mary scrambled down from her horse, landing on her feet heavily, and quickly loosed her bags. Valentine was at her side in a moment, pulling her from the street while the liveryman took possession of the horses, grinning at her the entire time. A shiver ran up her spine.
She thankfully lost sight of the man as Valentine tugged her along behind him into the shade between two buildings. He released her arm and then dropped his bags onto the dirt, following them to one knee and pulling a satchel open.
“What do you have that you do no absolutely need?” he asked, his voice still gruff, Mary assumed from the conversation with the rude stableman. He dumped the contents of his bag and began sorting through the items quickly.
“Well, I don’t know exactly,” Mary said, watching him with wonder as he reconfigured his possessions using priorities she could not grasp. “What might I have need of?”
“My apologies, Maria,” he said in a milder tone, glancing up at her with a rueful smile. The contents of his bags were redistributed now and secure, and he held out his hand. “If you will allow me?”
Mary handed him her satchels, and Valentine wasted no time in treating her own possessions in the same hasty manner, resulting in one bag that was straining at the seams and another that contained items Mary could not ascertain if he had deemed necessary or not. One of her bags was left limp and empty.
He handed her up the lighter satchel and added the other two to his own shoulder, rising to his feet. “Let us go,” he said, taking her elbow and leading her back onto the street.
“Are we passing the night in this . . . place?” she asked, glancing around furtively as she let Valentine pull her along the rutted thoroughfare.
“No under the threat of certain death,” Valentine muttered. “And it would likely come to that if we were to stay.”
“Good.” Mary sighed. “But what about our horses? Surely we cannot push them any farther this day.”
“They are no our horses any longer, Maria,” Valentine said as he paused before a ramshackle building, pushing aside the dirty curtain across its doorway and peeking inside. He let the curtain fall and turned back to her. “I sold them.”
“To that dreadful man?”
“Yes. Come along. Stay close.” He pulled the curtain aside fully and ushered her into the dark.
Valentine realized that he needn’t have warned Maria to remain close to his side as soon as they stepped inside the tiny shop—she had no choice but to stay pressed to him, lest she accidentally brush against one of the countless towers of goods and be crushed to death by the ensuing avalanche. Which almost happened when two snarling, snapping, growling mouths came at them from behind a tall counter.
Valentine pushed Maria behind him and reached for his blade, crouching down and readying himself to slit at least one beast’s throat before the dull clink of chain sounded and stopped the monsters’ advance not a hair too soon. Maria screamed shrilly—and a bit late, Valentine thought—her voice competing with the hounds’ barking in the limited space of the shop. Two huge dogs—half as tall as Valentine himself—with wiry gray hair, long square snouts, and rangy legs strained at their bonds, causing the floor beneath Valentine’s feet to shudder with every hollow volley.
A wheezy voice called from behind another curtain beyond the tall bench, and a moment later a little white troll of a man appeared. His crown was bald, but the hair around the sides and back of his head was thick and white and stuck up in a rather startled manner. He wore a leather tunic and green leggings, with wide-cuffed leather boots about his skinny ankles. Many belts and straps crisscrossed his chest and the narrow circumference of his body, with a variety of locks, clasps, tassels, vials, and jewels dangling from the loops. Valentine thought he even spied the dehydrated carcass of a small mammal but wasn’t sure, as it was near the man’s ear, and a moment later had blended into the hair that sprouted there.
The old man whistled sharply to the hounds and they quieted, although they only slunk down into a crouch with frustrated whines rather than retreat to the counter, which would have made Valentine infinitely more comfortable.
“Good day, merchant,” Valentine said in the language he had used to converse with the rat-assed liveryman. “Will you trade?”
The little man eyed Valentine with a growing sly grin that revealed a surprising row of little white teeth. “Not if you insist we conduct our business in that gutter language you’re using now,” the man said in perfect Spanish, and Valentine let his own grin blossom.
“We are countrymen, are we not?” the old man pressed.
“Perhaps,” Valentine hedged, not wishing to reveal too much to the old man. “Are you well familiar with Seville?”
“Bah,” the merchant snorted, flapping his hands at Valentine and then disappearing behind the counter, which was taller than the old man. His head appeared incrementally, as if utilizing a set of steps hidden behind the bench. “I could smell the Aragon on you as you stepped inside, boy. I think we can do business. What are your needs?”
Valentine moved to step closer to the counter but quickly retreated as the hounds regained their feet and their voices.
The old man whistled again and then clicked his tongue twice, and the two dogs at last turned tail and slunk behind the counter.
“You understand that I must preserve my interests in a place such as this,” the old man explained. “I am not much for the sword any longer. Too old.”
“Good merchant,” Valentine began, as he strolled to the counter and braced his forearm along the top, near his own shoulder. Maria skittered along behind him, keeping a loose hold on the back of his tunic. “I am a physician, traveling with my patient to Brussels. We have worn out our horses and must travel the remainder of the way by river. I have not enough elixirs nor supplies to sustain us until we reach our destination, but I have some goods and a small amount of coin to trade.”
The man’s eyes narrowed. “A physician, are you?”
Valentine smiled. “Yes. That is right.”
“And I am the duke of Normandy.” He raised one spidery eyebrow. “I have not in my life known a proper physician to ever come out of Aragon, and none of any country has ever come through this hellish place, let alone to my donkey cock shop. What is it exactly that you are wanting, criminal?”
Valentine drew his head back and affected an offended air. “Only the typical supplies for a journey of any length—food, a bit of soap. And then a tincture of poppy mixed with a handful of other ingredients. I am more than capable of preparing the potion myself if you will only provide the components. I can assure you that I am—”
“You can assure me that you are pretending to be someone you are not in order to escape those who are pursuing you—” he edged up as if on tiptoe to look down his nose at Maria, still hiding behind him—“and the young woman cowering at your back.” He looked at Valentine with a menacing frown now, like a wicked character from some childhood tale. “She is no more your patient than I, and I shall not provide such ingredients for you to render her unconscious, and possibly kill her. I’d wager she has no idea what you are even asking me for, and if she did, she would run as fast as she could. Perhaps straight into the arms of your pursuers, yes?”
“No, you do not understand,” Valentine said, trying to control his impatience. He felt a tug on his tunic.
“Is everything all right?” Maria asked in a worried-sounding whisper.
“It is fine,” he said over his shoulder in English. “Everything is fine.” He turned back to the merchant. “Whether you believe me or not, we are in a terrible hurry.”
“Oh, I am certain you are. Is she dying?” the man asked, trying to peer over Valentine again. “She appears healthy to me.”
“Her illness, it is—” Valentine paused, leaned forward conspiratorially—
“mental.”
The old man raised an eyebrow. “Good day, milady,” he said in English, directly to Maria.
Maria popped her head from around Valentine’s arm to look up at the troll. “Oh! Good day!” she replied with cheerful surprise, betraying what Valentine was beginning to think was an accurate diagnosis. “Your dogs are quite beautiful. Frightening but beautiful.”
“You are too kind, milady. I do love them so. Traded some copper to a Gaul for them when they were only pups. They seem fearsome, but they are like kittens when we are alone.”
“I’m certain they are,” Maria said agreeably. “And well they should be. What line are they, do you know? I’ve not seen any of their kind before.”
Valentine sighed and raised his voice to interrupt the merchant’s animated reply. “I beg your pardon!” When Maria and the merchant both turned their faces toward him, he continued in a calmer manner. “As I said, we are in a bit of a rush. Will you trade or no?”
To Valentine’s consternation, the merchant looked again to Maria. “Are you very ill, milady?”
Maria opened her mouth and then looked to Valentine.
Yes,
he tried to convey to her with his eyes.
Maria appeared confused for a moment and then began a horribly false-sounding racking cough. “Yes. I
am
ill. So ill. I think I have the plague,” she rasped.
Valentine rolled his eyes.
But the merchant only threw back his head and laughed, as if it was the funniest thing he’d ever heard.
“I’m certain you must, if you’ve cast your lot with the likes of him,” he said, tossing his head toward Valentine. “What I mean to say, young woman, is: are you with this man of your own election? Do you trust him?”
Maria glanced at Valentine for a moment, as if unsure what to say. Valentine didn’t think any more damage could be done unless she decided to confide in the old man the details of their adventure together.
She looked back at the merchant, and her voice was once again strong and clear. “Actually, I came a very long way to find him. And I trust him implicitly.”
The merchant’s eyes narrowed. “With your life?”
Maria did not look at him again, but Valentine felt the weight of her next words in the core of his heart.
“With my life, at the very least.”
In moments the merchant had released his dogs and let them loose to cavort with Maria on the shop floor. The old troll beckoned to Valentine to follow him behind the curtain.
“Bring your coin and your bags.”
Chapter 15
“S
he will be safe,” the merchant advised as he let the curtain fall behind Valentine. “The villagers know to call out before they enter, and if it is a stranger who comes—well, they should not remain for very long, yes?”
The narrow room behind the curtain was dim and cramped—little more than a walkway between floor-to-ceiling shelves that held row upon row of crocks and jars and sacks and bowls.
“Let’s see, let’s see,” the old man muttered, squinting up at the shelves. “Ah, there you are.” He seized a spindly ladder and moved it across the floor in front of Valentine with a dusty scrape.
“Perdone.”
Then he began to climb, the rickety thing bowing under even the merchant’s slight weight. He fussed at the front of his tunic before removing one of the little vials, and then laid the cork aside and began filling the cylinder with little pinches from various containers.
“So,” he said while tending to his task, “you wish her to sleep.”
“Yes,” Valentine replied, trying to say as little as possible to the keen old man.
The merchant paused and turned his bumpy profile over his shoulder, his fingers pinched above the vial’s opening. “Ah . . . for how long?”
Valentine frowned and tried to figure the distance in his head. “A week?”
The old man turned more fully on the ladder to look sternly at Valentine.
“Off and on,” he amended. “It is the river. She becomes ill.”
An expression of understanding came over the merchant’s face and he added the pinch still held between his fingers before grabbing the cork and scurrying back down the ladder. “I can add no antiemetic,” he said with a tinge of regret, dragging the ladder along the shelf by hooking his arm through it. He began climbing again, pausing to add this and that in tiny amounts during his ascent. “If I was accompanying you to monitor the dosage, perhaps. But if she were to ingest too much—she would not be able to rid her body of the poison, you see?”
“I do.”
“Hmm. Hmm.” The little troll placed a finger against his lips, surveying the pots before him. “But perhaps a little mint. You know,” he said to Valentine directly as he began to once more descend the ladder, “there was another of our countrymen in my shop some time ago.” He glanced up at Valentine before grabbing a jug from a nearby bench and uncorking it with his perfect little teeth. He poured a small amount of clear liquid into the vial, turning the contents a rich and wicked brown.
“A man from Aragon, you say?” Valentine asked, trying to appear suitably surprised.
“Or was it Seville?” the merchant goaded, recorking the jug and then the vial and shaking the little cylinder efficiently. “I’d wager my teeth for Aragon. He was searching for his cousin.” The old man handed the vial to Valentine and made sure to meet his eyes. “The two of you share a resemblance.”
“I have no family,” Valentine said and took the vial. “How much of this?”
“Only a finger. Perhaps a little less—she is a small woman. And best after she’s eaten a hearty meal.” The man took the empty sack Valentine offered him and began depositing little parcels of unknown contents inside. “He seemed quite concerned for your whereabouts, this man.”
“I’m certain he was,” Valentine muttered.
The old man looked around.
“A man searching for his family is usually distraught,” Valentine explained in their native tongue.
The merchant winked and then returned to filling the bag.
“’Tis true, ’tis true. If the woman is not your patient, and she came a distance to find you, who is she?”
Valentine hesitated a moment. “She is my wife.”
This gave the troll great pause. He looked at Valentine keenly for an instant and then began to chuckle. “I would sooner accept you to be her physician.”
“You do not believe a woman such as she could be my wife?” Valentine asked, hearing the offense in his tone.
“I do not,” the merchant admitted. “But if she were your wife, you would be a fool to give her up.”
“I would be a fool to keep her,” he said. “She would never be happy.”
The old man reached past Valentine to push aside the curtain with the back of his gnarled fingers. He glanced out and then leaned back, nodding toward the opening.
Valentine could not control his curiosity, and so he leaned toward the curtain, peeking into the room.
Maria was propped in a corner amidst the piles of goods, a giant gray head across each of her thighs. She stroked the beasts’ long foreheads from snout to ear as their wiry jowls billowed and collapsed with their snores.
“She looks happy enough to me.”
Valentine stepped away from the opening, and the merchant let the curtain fall. “She . . . adapts well to bad situations,” he said.
“Whatever you say, friend.” The little troll handed the now bulging sack to Valentine with a knowing grin. “Here you are. I’ll take your trade now.”
“Do you not wish to inspect the items?” Valentine asked, holding out the bag. “How do you know my possessions are worth what you’ve given me?”
“I shall take it all.” And he did just that. “Being the only trader in this hellish burg, I sell every manner of thing. And unless this sack contains the Holy Grail, my potion alone is worth more,” the merchant said with a quirked brow. “But it is rare that I cross paths with a man of my own country, and it shall never be said that Morcillo does not help his own.” He started to move past Valentine and threw over his shoulder, “Even if he is a fool.” Another false start. “And a poor liar.” Then he held the curtain aside for Valentine to precede him.
“I am not a poor liar,” Valentine hissed as he passed.
The dogs had to be ordered from the nest of Maria’s lap, and she, too, seemed sad when the animals left her. After looking at Valentine quizzically and receiving no lead to follow, she proceeded to thank the little troll and wish him and his ugly beasts every good thing she could possibly think of.
The merchant was clearly charmed, and he bowed low over Maria’s hand and kissed it twice tenderly, calling down God’s blessing upon her.
Mary blushed and smiled.
Valentine rolled his eyes. Then he took possession of Maria’s elbow. “Many thanks,” he said to the merchant with a curt bow, and then turned Maria toward the curtained entrance.
“Good luck to you,” the troll called out in his and Valentine’s shared tongue. “And beware—those men usually return around this time of year.”
Valentine stopped abruptly, nearly pulling Maria from her feet. He turned to look at the old man. “Men? You said
man
before—one man, seeking his cousin.”
“Did I?” the old troll said with a contemplative air. “Well, they ofttimes do not travel together, you see? And perhaps it was not cousin but brother. As I said, I am an old man. It should not matter to you, as you have neither, yes? Farewell!” He gave a jaunty wave and a grin.
“Well, that was a pleasant surprise,” Mary said as she skipped along behind Valentine. “What a lovely little man. And he spoke English, too.”
“My cousin has been to this place,” Valentine said curtly, leading the way past the stable, helping Mary around the copious piles of rotting dung. “Likely my brother, too. They are still searching for me.”
His words startled Mary out of her dreamy reverence for the old Spanish merchant. “It is well that we are on our way then, is it not? Did he have what we need?”
Valentine pulled the vial from his tunic and handed it to her. “Your carriage, my lady.”
Mary frowned at the muddy brown liquid in the thick, bubbled glass before uncorking it and taking a tentative sniff. She gagged and took the vial away from her nose.
“This doesn’t smell at all like the potion Lady Elmsbeth gave me.”
Valentine took the small container back and recorked the stopper. “The potion Lady Elmsbeth gave you was most likely strong spirits,” he advised, slipping the vial into his rough cowled tunic. “And while it perhaps was enough when you were sheltered within a ship, it would no work for our purposes, beyond increasing the occurrence of—” He waved one hand in the air, as if searching for the correct word.
Mary winced. “Vomiting?”
“I think yes,” he said with a sage nod.
“What is it, then, if not spirits?” she asked, heaving her now much heavier satchel over her arm and following him farther along the row of rickety buildings toward the wharf.
“It is a type of—” more waving of the hand, and Mary was beginning to understand that she should take the motion as a harbinger of something dreadful—“ah, a type of poison.”
Mary stopped on the first gray board of the creaking pier and waited for Valentine to turn around.
“Poison?”
He rolled his eyes at her and shook his head, as if she was completely overreacting. “Only a tiny bit. Just enough, you see?”
“Enough to kill me?” she demanded.
He sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. “You are no going to drink the whole thing at once, Maria.”
“The way it smells, and considering it’s
poison
, I doubt I shall be drinking any of it!”
He spread his arms wide and gave her a bow. “Suit yourself.” Then he turned on his heel and began walking once more down the pier, his boots echoing on the raised and rotted wood. He gave a little hop over a section with missing boards, the river sloshing beneath like a fat brown ogre waiting to devour her.
“Valentine!” she demanded.
He stopped, his shoulders drawing up near his ears. He turned, leaped over the hole in the pier once more, strode up to her as if he would run her over, then stopped just as his tunic brushed her gown.
As Mary had known he would.
“If you would be so kind, Maria, as to refrain from using my given name in a place crawling with criminals, and where my family has recently been inquiring of me, you would win my undying devotion.”
“Is that all I have to do?” she mused up into his face, trying to ignore her quivering knees.
“What do you want?”
“That pier doesn’t look at all secure,” she said.
“As you could see with your own eyes, I traversed it with no trouble.”
She took a deep breath, as if in preparation to speak, but found she could say nothing, and so she continued to look up into his face.
His eyes looked into hers, his lashes twitching with the little movements of his gaze, and she saw his brow soften the tiniest bit.
“Do no be afraid, Maria,” he said. “You will be fine, potion or no potion, yes?”
“Yes,” she said at last, giving a shaky sigh. She was grateful he had not insisted she try to convey to him her fear of the leg of their journey that lay just ahead of them now. Not only the travel by river but the persistent and growing knowledge that the closer they came to the North Sea, the farther away Valentine moved from her. Already his past was encroaching, causing his thoughts to turn inward and then ahead of them, to the time when he would be free of her. “Can you . . . ?” She held one hand slightly away from her, palm up.
His full lips quirked, but not maliciously, and he readjusted their satchels in order to take her fingers in his warm grip. “All right now?”
She smiled as a flush crept up her neck and then nodded. Perhaps it would be different this time.
“Are you certain? We can go now?” He cocked his head, and Mary could see the sparkle return to his eyes. “You do no need a privy? A sweet?”
“I would love a sweet,” she said, playing along.
He tugged her fully onto the pier, keeping her attention on his face as he continued to make light. “We shall have to see what is in the bag the little troll gave us. As soon as we are underway, yes?” He placed both hands at her waist and lifted her over the missing boards and then joined her with a fleet leap, once more taking her hand. “No, no—do no look down at the water; look at me.
Bueno.
Nearly there now.”
Mary’s head was already swimming when they came to a stop only a moment later. She felt as though the pier was riding the waves, the shoreline on the far side of the river undulating lazily in the heat. Her throat constricted. She felt cold little beads of sweat dotting her hairline and upper lip.
This time would be no different after all. Unless it was perhaps worse.
“Here we are,” Valentine said, and Mary blinked and looked past him to discover the large raft she had seen earlier, with the triangle-shaped shelter tied to its mast.
“Maria?” Valentine called, giving her fingers a little shake. “Maria, give me your satchel.” He released her and reached for the strap of her bag, and immediately Mary felt herself begin to list drunkenly.
“Oh, no.” Valentine seized her arm just in time. “Find your balance once more. There you are. I’ll be just a moment. All right?”
She nodded, and felt a hard little pebble at the base of her throat that she tried to swallow so she could answer him properly. But the pebble only grew larger the more she tried to force her rigid muscles to obey.
Valentine stepped nimbly onto the floating square, and up close Mary could see the threadbare material of the sail, the patches on the triangular shelter, the wet rot at the base of the little bench. Brown water sloshed over the corners of the bucking raft as Valentine walked about. He drew a length of frayed, filthy rope through the straps of their satchels and then looped the rope around the mast securely.
Mary’s nostrils felt stuffed with the warm stench of dead fish and stewing vegetation. A rivulet of sweat ran down the nape of her neck and into the swampy place between her shoulder blades. The splashing of the river seemed to grow louder, a roar that pressed against her eardrums. Her mouth felt gritty, dry, and flooded with saliva in the same moment. If only she could swallow . . .
“Maria?” Valentine said, in what to Mary seemed like a whisper. She looked down and saw his handsome, concerned face looking up at her from the raft. He was holding a hand up to her, and even though she knew Valentine was standing perfectly still, his hand retreated, advanced, circled, blurred . . .