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

cloth in her hand. The fragrance of woodsmoke clung to the coarse fibres of her habit and a plain wooden cross on a leather cord swung at her neck. She looked at him narrowly and passed her hand back and forth in front of his face.
    'Are you awake?'
    Nicholas started to say of course he was, and discovered that his voice had disappeared. When he tried to speak, he was seized by a paroxysm of violent coughing. The nun exchanged cloth for a goblet and swiftly set it to his lips. As Nicholas drank, the spasm eased, leaving him breathless and weak. Subsiding against the bolsters, he nodded his thanks to her.
    'They were all certain that you were going to die. Father Gundulf gave you the last rites and prayers were said for your soul in the chapel.' Tilting her head to one side, she gave him a considering look. 'Either the prayers are working, or I am a good nurse and you are stronger than you look.' Nicholas grimaced and shook his head. Just now a new-born child could have defeated him in a fist fight. She offered him the drink again. Out of pride he raised a shaking hand to the cup and his fingers clumsily covered hers. The young nun gave a little start at the move and colour flushed across her cheekbones. Studying her as she set the cup aside and arranged the bedclothes, he remembered that her name was Sister Miriel. And then he thought of the gleaming ship in his dreams. The mind had a strange world and language of its own.
    'You are in the convent of St Catherine’s-in-the-Marsh,' she told him as she smoothed and tucked. 'We found you on the sheep pasture, but you told us that you had come from the estuary.'
    Nicholas frowned. It was difficult to sort the reality from his fevered dreams. All that came to him were images of churning mud and water, of desperation, terror, and the grim struggle to survive.
    'I suppose,' she said, 'that you were a member of King John's baggage train.'
    Nicholas looked at the woven stripes on the coverlet and nodded warily. An unwilling member, it was true, but nevertheless a witness to the doom.
    'The soldiers have been searching the shore every day since it happened, but they have recovered naught but a few bodies and broken pieces of wood. It is said that the entire royal treasure was lost beneath the waves.' There was a sudden vibrancy in her tone at the mention of the treasure, which sat ill-at-ease with the image of a nun dedicated to the pure service of God. Nicholas had not missed the glow in her voice, but he was too tired to examine its reason. He thought it fortunate that the loss of his own voice meant that he did not have to explain anything.
    She studied him and pursed her lips, which were as full and sensual as her nose was thin and austere. 'We had to say prayers in chapel for King John too,' she remarked, 'although not because he lost his baggage train. We heard the news yesterday that he has been stricken with gripes in the belly and is sick unto death.'
    Nicholas's gaze sharpened and he formed a question with raised eyebrows.
    'It is true, I swear it.' She placed her hand on the little wooden cross at her breast. 'He was first taken ill at Lynn, but his condition has worsened apace. Mother Abbess says that his sins are coming home to roost.'
    Nicholas nodded and closed his eyes again so that she would not see the leap of joy in them. It might be wrong to exult at such news, but he would go to confession with a light heart. To the devil his own - and in very short order, he hoped. Perhaps then he could close the door on his past.
     
    Gradually Nicholas recovered the use of his voice. His strength returned too as he devoured the nourishing broths and tisanes that were prepared for him. Although he much preferred the ministrations of Sister Miriel who would talk to him and was easy on the eye, she was seldom in attendance. Usually it was a nervous biddy called Godefe, skinny as a punt-pole, who treated him as if he was going to spring from his pallet and ravish her at the