Temptress Read Free Page B

great hall, so recently asleep, was teeming with activity. The castle dogs, too, were unsettled, the old bitch pacing and growling while Mort, sensing a chance to best the beast, stole her spot near the fire.
    Servants hurried in with fresh towels and steaming pots of water. Others lit candles and cast worried looks at the wounded man. Sheeting was laid upon a table near the fire where two boys were busily adding wood and pumping the bellows.
    The man on the stretcher moaned though his eyelids didn’t so much as flutter as he was transferred onto the table. Who was he? Why had he been attacked so violently? He whispered something, a word, and yet it was indistinguishable.
    “What’s going on here?” Alfrydd, the steward, strode into the room. He was a scarecrow of a man, his tunic always hanging oddly from his scrawny shoulders. His voice had a nasal goose-squawk quality to it and he was a worrier who sometimes put Isa to shame, but he was loyal and true, a brave heart trapped inside a skeletal body. “Oh, m’lady,” he added quickly as his gaze fell upon Morwenna. “Excuse me, but I heard that a prisoner had been brought up here rather than to the dungeon and I was uncertain that this was a wise decision.”
    “ ’Twas mine,” Morwenna said, motioning to the wounded man, “and he’s not a prisoner.” Again the man tried to whisper something, but it was unintelligible.
    Alfrydd nodded as if in agreement, but he couldn’t hide his shock when his eyes landed on the bloodied, beaten piece of humanity laid upon the table. “Has the priest been called?”
    “Aye, and the physician,” she said and then added impatiently, “Where the devil is Nygyll?”
    As if he’d been waiting to hear his name, the physician burst through the outer door, bringing with him the scent of fresh rain and a gust of wind heavy with the promise of snow. A tall man with an easy gait and an air of arrogance, he walked purposefully toward the table where the wounded man lay. Isa was on his heels, taking two steps to his one. “Isa claimed there was an emergency,” he said. “Ah . . . I see. Who is he?”
    Morwenna shook her head. “We know not.”
    “Friend or foe?” Nygyll was already cutting away the rest of the man’s tunic and leaning near, listening to his rasping breath.
    “Again, ’tis not known.”
    “His clothes are those of a poor man.”
    Yet he was suspected of being a spy. How odd . . .
    “Where’s the hot water?” the physician demanded, and a serving girl set a pot on a nearby table while another placed a stack of towels near the steaming water. “I’ll need a mash of yarrow.” His eyes narrowed on the first serving girl. “Send someone to the apothecary.”
    “I’ll go,” she said and hurried away, her skirts billowing.
    Carefully Nygyll began to clean the wounds, first tackling those that seemed the most life threatening.
    Again the main door opened, and this time two men talking low entered in a rush of biting winter wind. Alexander, captain of the guard, a muscular man with curling brown hair, a square jaw, and eyes as brown as sable, was leaning down and talking to Father Daniel, the keep’s priest, who appeared as weak as the soldier seemed strong. No matter what the season, the priest forever remained pale, his skin nearly translucent, his eyes an icy blue, his red hair thick and wiry, his expression dour. He was a man of the cloth who seemed to take the burden of being God’s messenger as a heavy, sometimes unbearable load. His eyes met Morwenna’s for but an instant, and then he quickly looked away.
    Before the door could close, Dwynn, the half-wit, slipped through. A man of twenty-odd years, he’d been cursed from birth with the mind of a child. He caught Morwenna’s eye and sidestepped around the priest, slipping out of her direct line of vision. She’d never understood his fear of her, for she’d tried to be kind to him, but he seemed to want to always avoid her, which, this morn,