Maze of Moonlight by Gael Baudino (top 20 books to read txt) 📗

reassure her, inwardly he saw the parallel again. Vanessa's surety had obviously perished beneath Etienne's lechery and a brass candlestick; his own beliefs had died on the sands of Nicopolis.

He talked to her, asked her questions, found that she remembered who she was and what had happened. That was good. Christopher had seen strong men reduced to idiocy by much smaller head wounds. Apparently the talents and methods of Mirya and Terrill—whoever and whatever they were, but let that pass—included the painstaking reassembly of a mind.

He told her where she was and how she had gotten there, but as Vanessa's eyes flitted about the room, taking in stolid Pytor and Jerome, matronly Raffalda, Christopher still sensed her fear. Deep-seated. Relentless.

“It's all right,” he said. “You're safe here, and you'll be fine. You had some good doctors.” Good doctors, indeed! But he squelched the thought. He was determined to keep up the charade of Vanessa's bandages for the stipulated length of time. Best, therefore, not to let her know that it was a charade at all.

“An' Martin wa' wounded,” she said, her eyes, restless, still examining the room as though it might suddenly shift into another form.

“Yes,” said Christopher. “He's with his parents now.”

“Aye . . . tha' I saw. Tha' I knew.” She suddenly focused on Christopher. “Wi' are you doing thi' for such as me?”

Christopher smiled. “You fought Etienne of Languedoc. That means we're on the same side. Think of it as a gesture of a comrade in arms.”

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Jerome and Pytor exchange glances. Yes, he supposed that he was sounding like a madman again, but the seneschal and the bailiff would just have to get used to that.

And Vanessa's eyes, luminous, bright, bored in at him. “You di' it because o' the battle, din't you?”

Nicopolis. She could see it. Christopher suddenly understood why Vanessa's traveling companions had been so frightened of her.

He pursed his lips. “Yes,” he said. “I did.”

His brutal honesty seemed to shock her a little, but she only nodded.

Though she had to remain bandaged, Christopher saw no reason to keep her confined to bed. He urged her not to exert herself too much—he had, after all, no real understanding of the intricacies of the healing that she had received—but, much to the distress of Pytor and Jerome, he gave her the freedom of the castle and, since her fingers were still clumsy with linen wrappings, insisted upon feeding her with his own hands.

He was feeding himself. He was freeing himself. He was nurturing himself. He struggled constantly to be aware of the fact that Vanessa was a peasant girl, that she had her own sorrows and her own burdens, but privately, he allowed himself to use her—in fine delAurvre style, he admitted—as a means to his own ends. If he could help Vanessa, if he could make her happy, then he himself had a chance.

But Vanessa gave him little chance to forget her individuality, for when she was not with Christopher, she wandered through the deserted corridors of Aurverelle like a restless, wide-eyed bird, trailing her sham bandages like broken feathers. No one was safe from her knowing eyes, nor from the strange, unpredictable comments she made that struck unerringly at her listener's most private and sensitive thoughts.

“It wa' the monastery, wan't it?” she said to Jerome. “You were a' fighting among yourselves about the pope?”

The Franciscan stood as though struck, crossed himself without thinking.

“It's a' right,” said Vanessa. “You di' well to leave.”

Jerome fled.

And Pytor heard about Medno, about the money he had borrowed at a ruinous rate of interest by indenturing himself and his family, about his failure to repay it, about the sickness that had taken his wife and daughters because he could not afford a doctor. And David was confronted with wide brown eyes and reassurances about his talents and abilities. And Ranulf was told about the daughter that he had always wished that he had. And . . .

Only Christopher, who freely admitted the existence of his personal demons, was unshaken by Vanessa's words. He did not cross himself or flee: he simply nodded. He did not fear her. How could he? He was her.

When he found that she could read, he made sure that she saw the library and he issued orders that she be given whatever books she wanted—a relief to many, because she began to spend much time in her room with heavy volumes open on her lap. He took her for walks in the gardens that his grandfather had planted. He sang for her, taught her courtly dances, ordered several fine gowns for her. But when, on a whim, he growled for her and capered like a bear, she looked distressed and shushed him quickly. “Dan do tha'” she said. “Dan do tha' to yourself.”

Christopher dropped his arms. “To myself, Vanessa?”

“It hurts you to do tha',” she said. “You di' too much o' it . . . before.”

Her eyes were as strange and knowing as ever, but her voice was full of concern. Christopher considered, nodded, and taking her arm, set off once more along the avenue of peach trees. “You know,” he said, “you really distress people when you go on like that.”

Vanessa drooped. “I know. I see tha', too.”

“Why do you do it, then?”

“I . . .” She looked up at the interlacing leaves and incipient fruit. Criss-crossing branches reflected in her eyes. She had told Christopher about the patterns that she saw: patterns that contained everything, patterns that interlaced with greater complexity than even these pleached and twined branches, patterns that allowed her—forced her—to see into people's lives . . . and, with maddening regularity, into the future. “I can't help it,” she said.

“Have you ever thought to simply remain silent?”

Vanessa hung her bandaged head, clung to his arm as though blind. “The patterns say tha' I can't. They tell me I ha' to talk. They say there's no other way. An' so I say