Candace Robb - The Apothecary Rose

'Stop that!' she hissed. She tried to calm herself, to think of what she might use as a weapon. She remembered the knife she used for bandages. It was on the table beside the bed.

'I have a right to say my farewells.' Anselm bent to kiss Nicholas again. 'He loved me. I protected him.'

'Love?' Lucie edged closer. 'Nicholas feared you. He said you were mad. Evil.'

Anselm screeched and put Nicholas down with trembling arms.

Lucie grabbed the knife and held it behind her, backing away.

Anselm reared up. 'You are the spawn of the evil that poisoned the soul of my Nicholas’ he cried. 'Nicholas loved me. It was a pure, innocent love. And then she turned him away. Amelie D'Arby. The French whore’

'And so you tricked innocent Nicholas into killing her’

Anselm grinned. 'It happened just as I prayed it would’

'You coward. You had your beloved commit the sin for you. So Nicholas will burn for it. Not you’

'She will burn. Not my Nicholas. She died horribly. Haemorrhaging, life gushing from her. Such pain. Such fear. And she was unshriven, did you know that? Unshriven. She burns in Hell now, my little she-wolf. Do you think of her there? Writhing in the eternal fire?'

Lucie slashed out at his face with the knife. But she was inexperienced. She opened the side of his face, not his eye.

Anselm shrieked and lunged for the knife.

Lucie kicked at him’ but her skirts hampered her.

He knocked the knife out of her hand.

She grabbed a chair and rammed his side with it. He tottered’ but came back at her almost at once. He was bleeding from the stomach, the side of his face, his forehead. She could not imagine where he got the strength to continue.

He grabbed her. Got her neck in his hands. One hand pressed into her. The other did nothing. Lucie twisted in the direction of the bad hand. He drove her head against the wall. The impact stunned her and her knees buckled beneath her. Anselm yanked her up and slammed her head against the wall again. She screamed as she felt her knees go out completely. He grabbed her up and pressed her against the wall, the good hand round her throat.

Footsteps came pounding up the stairs. Dear God, give me the strength to kill him. For my mother. For my husband, Lucie prayed. She dug her nails into Anselm's hand. He rammed his head against hers. Her ears rang. She could taste his sweat and blood.

'Stay back, Dame Phillippa’ Owen called from outside the door. 'Stay out of the way.' The door crashed open.

Anselm hissed and clutched Lucie to him. Owen tore her out of the Archdeacon's broken hand. She crawled towards the knife.

Anselm, howling in anger and pain, lunged for Owen, who turned, caught him in his powerful arms, and threw him against the wall. Anselm hit it with a sickening sound of breaking bone and slumped to the floor, his head sinking down on his shoulder at an unnatural angle. Phillippa screamed.

Owen hurried to Lucie.

She knelt with the knife raised, staring at the broken body of the Archdeacon. 'You have killed him?' A touch of breathlessness. Disbelief. 'He was mine to kill. Mine.'

Owen knelt beside her, touched her chin, gently turned her face towards him. 'You put up a good fight, Lucie. He is dead now. He can hurt no more of your family.'

She twisted her head to look back at Anselm. 'He uncovered Nicholas. Kissed him and — '

'Let me take you downstairs’ Owen said gently.

'He — ' Lucie pulled away from Owen and struggled to stand by herself. 'He snarled and snapped like a wounded animal. I did not — He did not seem human. And the way he held Nicholas, I — ' she took a step towards Nicholas, his naked corpse lying on the sheet fouled by Anselm's blood. She put her hand to her mouth. 'The way he held him. Touched him. Taunting me. I — Nicholas died fearing him. And that monster held him there when Nicholas could not fight him.' Her body trembled.

'Lucie?' Owen touched her arm.

She backed away, went to stand over her husband's body, hugging her elbows to her sides, the knife trembling in her hands. 'My God. Even in death the man clutched at him. Such a terrible, suffocating love. More hate than love. What was my husband's sin, that he should suffer so long?' She lifted the bloodstained sheet. 'What right had he? What right?' All the blood. Her mother's gown had been heavy with blood, the skirt pooling on the rushes, so wet and cold. Her skin so smooth and cold. Owen went to her. 'Let me take you down to the kitchen.'

Lucie shook her head. 'Bess will have a clean sheet. She will have a clean sheet.'

A door opened down below. Footsteps crossed the kitchen, mounted the stairs. Voices murmured on the landing.

Bess stepped through the doorway. 'Merciful Mother,' she whispered at the sight of Nicholas's nakedness against the bloody sheet. 'What happened?' Her eyes searched the room, took in Lucie's blood-smeared face, the bloodstains on Owen's shirt, and rested on the body of the Archdeacon. 'Holy Mary, Mother of God,' she breathed, leaning down to him, then turning away as she caught the stench of his ordeal. 'You cannot have done all this?' She looked Owen in the eye.

'He was wounded already.'

Their voices seemed to wake Lucie. She dropped the knife. It clattered on the floor.

'Lucie?' Bess said. She dabbed at the blood on her friend's face.

'The brandywine and blanket won't be necessary now’ Lucie said.

Bess looked at Owen. 'It's the Archdeacon's blood on the winding sheet?'

Owen nodded. 'Aye’

Bess was quiet a moment. 'The Archbishop's men are here with the coffin. Phillippa and I will wrap Anselm in his own filth and get a clean sheet for Nicholas.' She nodded to herself, turned to leave. Then turned back. 'And you two must deal with the Archbishop's men.'

Lucie had begun to shiver uncontrollably. Owen caught up her hands. They were like ice. He held them. 'I don't know what to do.' Lucie stared at her hands in his, her eyes wide with the numbness that Owen had seen time and again in his men when they had fought too long on a battlefield with the dead all about them, slipping on the blood and entrails of their comrades and their enemies, and suddenly it all became too much, their minds and hearts could deal with no more. 'I don't know what to do,' Lucie whispered.

'For the moment we must go downstairs,' Owen said, and led her by the hand.

The Archbishop's men rose, and Owen motioned them to sit back down. 'Mistress Wilton needs brandy-wine. I could use some, too.'

Wulfstan heard a pair of boots and an accompanying pair of sandals on the stone floor of the chapel. They paused in the doorway, then both came forward. Gold chains rattled richly. Wulfstan withdrew his senses, returning to his meditation on the cross, which he echoed in his posture, lying prostrate on the stone floor before the altar, arms outspread. The cross, Christ's agony, mankind's salvation. Salvation. Because of that selfless act, man could hope for salvation, no matter how grievous his sin.

He struggled to keep his mind on the cross, but discipline did not come easily to Wulfstan. He floated, his thoughts drifting up, over, around him, never quite engaging him, just brushing him with random strands. It was a pleasant feeling that he found impossible to resist. But he tried. He had a vague idea that he should not be comforted, that he'd done something unforgivable, though at the moment he could not remember what it was. When he tried to remember, he became frightened and shied away from the effort. 'Brother Wulfstan, can you hear me?'

It was a quiet, unfamiliar voice. Deep, resonant. Wulfstan liked the voice. But he did not answer. To speak would break the bubble in which he floated. Why could they not leave him alone?