So then, it must have been King John’s past hurts that prodded her heart to the verge of mourning. Already strained by the gash on her head, Gisela whimpered softly as tears formed under her eyelids, adding pressure to her already-swollen eyes.
“Whoa.” The king pulled his mount to a halt. He shifted, and a moment later Gisela felt his hand on her face. “Are you getting worse?”
His touch imparted comfort, and when he drew his hand away, she missed it.
“Are you thirsty? Can you drink?”
Gisela mustered her voice. “Please.”
Moments later a flask touched her lips, and cool water flowed into her mouth. It tasted so much better than what they’d had on the ship, which had begun to carry the flavor of the wood barrels in which it was stored. The water John gave her was slightly sweet and blessedly refreshing to her fever-parched tongue.
“Now rest if you can,” he murmured, slowly urging the horse up to speed. “We have a long way to travel yet.”
Rest. If only she could—if only the pain would fade away and allow her a measure of peace. The cacophony of sound and light roared inside her head, thundering with each rise and fall of the horse’s stride. Would this infection be the end of her?
“You need to rest if you’re going to keep your strength.”
The king’s words were a reminder she sorely needed. Yes. She had a mission to fulfill. She couldn’t die. She had to keep up her strength. To rest.
The people they’d left back at the dock were depending on her. If she didn’t make it, there would likely be war, not only for her father’s people, but for King John’s, too. She owed it to them to survive.
More than that, she owed it to King John himself. His willingness to help her, politically motivated as it may have been, was nonetheless an act of charity. It would be ungrateful of her to die when he’d gone out of his way to procure for her the means of life. Besides, she had to recover if she was ever going to see if King John was half as handsome as she imagined him to be.
* * *
John kept to the main road that led southeast down the Lydian peninsula. When the woman in front of him finally slumped into a fitful sleep, he prodded his horse to greater speeds. He hadn’t wanted to upset Gisela too much, but they needed to hurry. He’d wasted precious time arguing with his courtiers.
Fortunately Moses, his favorite stallion, had been bred for speed. The animal hadn’t been out for a hard run in weeks and was eager to stretch his legs. “Good boy, Moses.” John reached past the Frankish princess and patted the stallion on the neck, encouraging him. If he had to take the emperor’s daughter to the Illyrian borderlands, there was no animal he’d rather ride.
And Fledge, his falcon, perched upon his shoulder with her beak pointed forward, the wind produced by the horse’s speed hardly ruffling the raptor’s feathers. Fledge was used to diving on her prey from blustery mountain updrafts. Their pace didn’t bother her in the slightest.
The only one John worried about was the Frankish princess, who moaned and twitched as she fought her rising fever. The late-summer day was warm, but her flushed face felt warmer still. John had seen this type of infection far too many times, and he knew its usual pattern. Without the hare’s tongue to stop it, the fever would continue to rise until the woman was dead.
It was just such a fever that had killed his own mother when he was a boy of twelve years. Tragically, she’d fallen sick during winter when there was no hare’s tongue to cure her. Nonetheless, John had set out with a search party in hopes of finding some tucked away under the snow.
He’d returned in the night half frozen from his search, with nothing to show for his efforts.
His mother had died the next morning.
The memory spurred him forward. It had been his last failure for many years. Some had said that with his mother’s passing he’d inherited her healing gift full force. For a while he’d almost believed them.
Then his own wife had taken ill during childbirth three years ago, after years of battling recurring illness and a miscarrying womb. In spite of all his efforts, he’d lost her and the child she carried. From then on, failure haunted his every effort at healing. Even simple maladies had spiraled out of his control, as though the touch of his hands carried death instead of healing.
His conscience tugged at him. What if his efforts at helping Princess Gisela only led her more quickly down the road to death? The Emperor Charlemagne would blame him and rightly so. Illyria, too. He’d bring war upon his people. Gisela’s death would bring more death until Lydia itself was conquered by foreign empires, dying to rise no more.
The thought of losing the princess prodded at a tender spot in his heart, and he pulled her closer against him, almost as though he could hold her back from death by the strength of his arms. Over the distressing smell of her infection he caught the delicate scent of rose perfume. He fought the temptation to bury his nose in her silk veil and breathe in deeply.
What would Charlemagne say? And yet, John found the impulse surprisingly difficult to resist. The woman’s obvious charms fascinated him. He would do well to find the herbs quickly so she could be on her way.
They passed vineyards and orchards and olive groves. Moses slowed as they came to a stream. John supposed the animal would have liked a drink, but he knew the water here was salty. The sea had cut a ravine through the slender bend in the finger of the peninsula. Every tide washed it wider.
John led the horse upstream to where the locals had improvised a bridge of beams. The site, John realized, could use some attention. Someday the sea might divide the peninsula into its own island. Even now, the beams barely stretched the width of the ravine, and John eyed the waters ten feet below with a wary eye as Moses’s hooves clattered across the sturdy planks. The princess shifted restlessly.
John peeled back the veil that covered her face from the sun and felt her forehead.
She was burning up.
He held his relatively cool hand against her skin as though it could absorb her heat and relieve her discomfort. But the touch imbued more than mere heat. Emotions that had lain dormant deep in his heart roused as though warmed by the sun after a long winter. But John had no intention of letting his feelings blossom to full flower.
“On, Moses,” he encouraged his horse. They still had a ways to go before they reached the point where the peninsula joined with the mainland. From there, they would turn northeast, toward the mountains. The ride lay long ahead of them.
The sea breeze faded behind them as they entered a more heavily wooded stretch of road. Here on the peninsula, travel was quite safe. Seaside villages clung to the rocky coastlines on either side of them. The road connected them to the mainland with its agricultural produce and access to the lands beyond.
But once they entered the dense woods at the foot of the mountains, John knew he’d have to be alert for trouble. Though Lydia’s borders had once followed the ridge of the mountains, the Illyrians had been encroaching on their land for generations. John’s father had died defending a village there. He’d lost his life and the village.
John’s younger brothers, Mark and Luke, sometimes talked about trying to take back those lands, but they hadn’t
