Rose of Hope by Mairi Norris

popped out with stark clarity. He needed no persuasion to leave. The corners of Fallard’s eyes crinkled as he watched his squire try to maintain his dignity by walking away very fast instead of running, as he clearly wished.
    Fallard tromped to the farthest cell—the one designated the isolation pit by Domnall, the cell where Ysane had been kept—and went inside. The unexpected stench hit him first. When he reached the bottom, he could stand not upright, for the roof of this cell was considerably lower than the others. Here, the darkness and damp reigned supreme.
    Anger at Ruald tore through him anew. ’Twas a cramped space, much of it taken up by the steps. The walls and floor were icy and covered with filthy, rotting matting. Moisture dripped from the ceiling and skimmed down the walls to pool under the straw. A set of manacles dangled from the wall of the narrow cleft created by the steps. There was naught else in the cell, not even a bower pot. Ruald had not even left her that.
    He now understood how Ysane had become ill. Domnall told him Ruald had allowed her but one thin blanket, and no light. The guards had fed her once a day, but of that, she had eaten naught. When he thought of all that was done to her, Fallard marveled again she still lived, but he wondered if her mind remained intact.
    A shadow darkened the sunlight streaming through the door and a serving boy peeked hesitantly into the cell.
    “Thegn D’Auvrecher, be ye here?”
    “I am here.” Fallard moved close to the steps where he could be seen.
    “My thegn, ye must come, and quickly. ’Tis the Lady Ysane. Ethelmar says she breathes her last!”
    Moments later Fallard arrived in the lord’s bower to find its inhabitants weeping and wailing, and he thought the lady already dead. A strange hurt pierced him and squeezed like a fist around the region of his heart. It unsettled him. He had expected regret if she died, but no pang of sorrow. He knew not the lady. How then could there be any touch of grief at her death?
    He moved to the bed, and bent more closely over Ysane’s still, recumbent form. A sudden fluttering of her bodice caused him to jerk upright.
    By the saints, she still breathed! Not yet was she beyond the reach of the living. But when he touched her forehead, he groaned. She burned alive. His eyes met those of the healer, who shook her head. He straightened and stared at the weeping women, noting with disgust that even Ethelmar was teary-eyed.
    Well, by the teeth of the saints, he would not yet consign her to oblivion. Until Ysane ceased to draw breath once and for all, he would fight to keep her alive.
    A memory surfaced then of one of the innumerable battles Fallard had fought in his youth. A knight, not one he knew well, but a comrade in arms, had received a minor wound. The wound festered, and the man became so fevered no amount of poultices, decoctions or laving with cool water had any effect.
    Their captain ordered the man stripped and carried to a nearby stream, where he was submerged in the shallows nigh the bank. ’Twas the fall of the year, and the fevered man screamed like a crazed thing at the painful touch of the icy water. He fought to heave himself out, but by the simple expediency of wading out and sitting on him, one of his comrades held him there. After a remarkably short time, the fever cooled and the man was dried, wrapped in blankets and laid nigh a crackling fire. At mid-morn the next day, he awakened, weak and weary, but hungry and in his right mind. From that day, his strength returned and his wound quickly healed. Would the same work to help Ysane?
    He turned to Ethelmar. “Cease this caterwauling! Go to the burnstów! I want the bath filled with cold water immediately. Has the hall a cellar where ice is kept?”
    “Aye, my lord. The larder lies within the buttery, and ice is kept there throughout most of the twelvemonth.”
    “Then have ice brought to the burnstów and added to the bath.”
    “My lord?”