Read Online The Marsh King's Daughter by Elizabeth Chadwick - Free Book Online

the "young girls like me" are already married with a baby in the cradle,' Miriel pointed out. 'And I am no shrinking innocent to balk at what must be done,' adding quickly as the sister's frown deepened, 'I nursed my grandfather through his final sickness. I had to do everything for him - everything,' she emphasised. 'My mother refused to go near the sick room.'
    The infirmaress conceded the point, but her brow remained furrowed. 'Why the interest in this one?' she asked suspiciously. 'I wonder if you are tempted by the devil's trap of youth and comeliness?'
    Miriel breathed out hard, forcing control upon herself. It was all she could do not to shriek at the old nun. 'He is not comely at the moment,' she said. 'I hate being helpless. I want to feel that I am doing something - that even if he dies we have tried our best.'
    The patient tossed, threw out his arm, and knocked the watered wine from her hands, splashing the bedclothes with a blood-red stain. Miriel swiftly retrieved the cup and pulled back the sheet.
    'Hide it,' he muttered. 'Have to hide it.' His chest rose and fell with the rapidity of his breathing. They had dressed him in a spare chemise from the linen coffer and it clung to his body in wet creases.
    Miriel took his hand. 'Hide what?' He turned his eyes to her, frowning, struggling to focus. For a moment they glimmered with lucidity. The semblance of a grin parted his lips. 'Pandora's box,' he gasped, and fell back, shuddering.
    The nun waved her stick. 'Do as you will with him,' she snorted and turned away, plainly deciding that she had wasted enough of her time. 'I doubt he is long for this world anyway.'
    'Thank you, sister,' Miriel said with a rush of relief. She was powerfully aware of how easily the infirmaress could have refused. 'Who's Pandora, do you think?'
    Sister Margaret shrugged indifferently. 'People in the grip of fever babble all manner of nonsense.'
    'I just wondered if he was trying to say something about the King's treasure.'
    The infirmaress stopped and gave Miriel a severe look over her shoulder, but then her lips twitched. 'Now who is babbling nonsense?' she asked. 'Keep your mind on your prayers, not the lure of material things.'
    'Yes, sister.' Miriel lowered her eyes and pretended to be chastened. But her curiosity was too great for that. She thought of what he had said and the way they had found him on the sheep pasture. If only she knew more. 'You're not going to die,' she muttered fiercely. 'I won't let you.'
    Nicholas felt as if he had been swimming for days in a hot and salty sea. Many times he had almost drowned beneath its waves, surfacing at the last moment, choking and gulping in extremity. He was aware of someone swimming with him, trying to buoy him above the waves, pleading with him to continue when all he wanted to do was let go and have peace.
    Occasionally his father appeared, but for once the spectre said little, except to make the tart observation that while Nicholas appeared to be fulfilling his vow to die in his bed, he was almost seventy years too soon.
    Nicholas ignored him for he did not have the strength and the current was too strong for him to turn and answer. Doggedly he continued to swim while the mist around him thickened into something resembling soup and scarcely breathable. Then he heard voices and saw the ship looming at him through the mist. Her strakes glistened and a scarlet dragon's head snarled at her prow. She was called Miriel and even at first sighting, even before he had seen the treasure chest in her. open hold, he knew instinctively that she belonged to him. J
    Firm hands reached down and hauled him aboard. Above his head a striped sail billowed, and the mist shredded away to clear blue sky before the strengthening wind. Beneath him
    the ship's deck rocked on the swell. The air was cold, clean and sharp. He drew a great lungful and opened his eyes.
    A young nun whose brown gaze and thin nose he vaguely remembered was leaning over him, a linen