Maid Of Midnight. Ana Seymour

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      Chapter Three

      Like a moth drawn to the brightness of the fire, Bridget found herself obsessed with a dangerous desire to see the stranger again. She wanted to ask him all about his home across the water—this Lyonsbridge. She could only begin to imagine all that he could tell her of life outside the walls. But the monks had guarded the secret of her presence all these years. She didn’t dare expose it. She would not see the Englishman again, she told herself firmly as she mechanically performed the morning chores. She would not even venture near the monks’ quarters until he was safely away from the abbey.

      But she could not rid herself of the memory of his blue eyes and teasing smile. His words ran over and over through her mind. Her ears rang with the sound of his deep voice as he’d called her “angel.”

      At midday she gave up the idea of getting in a good day’s work and wandered across the courtyard toward the church. Her conscience told her that she should spend the rest of the day on her knees begging the Lord’s forgiveness for being ungrateful for the life she’d been given. But instead, she turned away from the church door and went to the attached building, which housed the abbey’s collection of manuscripts. As usual, the library was empty.

      It was a poor collection compared to the great monasteries in other parts of Europe, but it contained the expected religious texts, which were dusted by one of the monks each month and rarely, if ever, read. The brothers of St. Gabriel were more interested in the scientific volumes, and these they kept out in the work shed, where they would be readily accessible.

      Bridget sometimes thought of the library as her own private sanctuary. She’d read every single book many times, but she returned most often to a special cupboard that contained volumes deemed unsuitable for perusal by the brotherhood. She’d been nearly fifteen years old before she’d dared look inside. Once she’d begun, however, the books had become her favorites. She read the tragic Greek myth of Orpheus who had traveled all the way to the underworld to find his lost Eurydice. She sighed over the love poems of Ovid. But she was most fascinated with the tales of the great English king, Arthur, and his bold knights.

      She took out the volume and began to read, though she could as well have recited the words by heart. Was Ranulf a knight? she wondered. They’d found him stripped of all possessions, but if he was from a noble family, surely he had come on horseback. He did have the strength of a warrior, she thought, flushing as she remembered the night she’d stripped away his bloody tunic.

      Eagerly her eyes raced over the familiar words. Lancelot had come from the continent to England to join Arthur’s fabled court. There he had found love with beautiful Guinevere. Now this knight, her knight, had come from England to the continent on his own noble mission. Would he too find love? Bridget smiled at her own fantasy.

      The knight lying in the monks’ quarters dressed in one of their habits had nothing to do with the legendary Lancelot. Nor would a poor girl raised in a forgotten monastery have anything in common with the fabled English queen.

      “Bridget! Are you in here?”

      Brother Francis’s voice interrupted her dreaming. Quickly she closed the wooden cover of the big book and slid it back on the shelf. “Aye, I’ve been studying,” she said, jumping up from the stool and going to meet the monk at the door before he could pay too much attention to the corner of the room that had been occupying her attention.

      Francis’s face was grave, and Bridget’s first thought was of the patient. “Is he worse?” she asked in alarm. “Has the fever heightened?”

      Francis shook his head. “Nay, he’s better. That’s the problem. He’s on his feet, even, and swearing to Alois that he intends to search the monastery until he finds the lovely nurse who has cured him.”

      Bridget winced. “Didn’t you tell him I was part of the delirium?”

      “Aye, sweet mischief maker. But this time he’s too sure of his own faculties. He’ll not hear me.” He gave her a reproving gaze. “I told you ’twould be foolish to go to him again.”

      Bridget tipped her head, considering. “Well then, you’ll have to tell him that I was a maid from Beauville whom you brought here to tend him. Send him there to search for her.”

      “I’d have to tell a falsehood—” he began.

      “Forgive me, Brother, but how many falsehoods have you told these many years to keep my presence a secret? One more will do nothing to alter the toll, I wager.”

      “I’ll think on it,” he said. “But for the moment, I’m to bring you to Alois.”

      Bridget groaned. Alois was the abbot of St. Gabriel. He had always seemed to Bridget to be a fair man but, unlike Francis, he had absolutely no sense of humor. She knew that his reprimand for her actions would be much more severe than Francis’s gentle chiding.

      “The stranger himself said that I may have saved his life,” she told Francis.

      “Aye, child. We all know that your medicines can work wonders, but ’tis the other that has raised Brother Alois’s concern.”

      “The other?” Bridget asked.

      Francis averted his eyes and stumbled over the words as he explained, “This man—the, um, patient—he’s claiming that he kissed you.”

      As it turned out, Bridget had had to face not only Brother Alois, but also Brother Cyril, the abbey prior, and Brother Ebert. She might have expected Ebert, since he was the brother who, by common consent, had most to do with the outside world. It had been СКАЧАТЬ