The Vampire & Her Witch

Chapter 1673: The Cypress Witch Revealed (Part One)

Lady Eira was the first person to move, slipping quietly into the chamber’s washroom to collect a small basin, washcloth, and soap, along with a pitcher of water that she set on an iron trivet over the coals of the room’s small hearth.

Dalwyn had peeked out from under the blankets, but Lady Cerys held him firmly in place. No matter how much her son wanted to greet the knight he’d come to idolize, this moment belonged to Sir Ollie and his family, and she wouldn’t let her son intrude on that.

In the end, it was Cynwrig who broke the silence as he lowered his chain veil and put away his sword.

"Jamys," Cynwrig said as he began working at the laces holding his mail coif in place, pulling it off along with the padded cap beneath it. "You should let him come in. I’m sure that armor isn’t any more comfortable than mine," he said as he tugged off the gauntlets that covered his hands, dropping them to the floor with an audible -chink.-

"Let me give Sir Ollie a hand with his armor," Cynwrig suggested. "Then he can give you a proper hug," he said with a bright smile on his lips as he placed a hand on Jamys’ shoulder, treating Sir Ollie’s father the same way he’d treat a brother if he’d had one.

"Ah, you’re right, you’re right, your lordship," Jamys said, pulling back from the embrace as his face heated beneath a day’s worth of rough stubble. "Ollie, come in, come in, that can’t be, um... It can’t be comfortable," he said as his eyes took in his son’s bloodstained armor for the first time since the door had opened.

Working in the stables of Lothian Manor, Jamys had encountered his share of injured knights during tournaments, but he’d never seen anything like his son. Ollie didn’t move like an injured man, and if his parents’ embrace was painful, he gave no sign of it. The blood that covered him belonged to someone else, or, from the amount of it, several others.

His son had become a knight, but he hadn’t returned home from something as clean and noble as a tournament. He’d come home from war, and the proof of it had seeped into his armor and his emerald green tabard.

"Lilee," Jamys said lightly as he placed a hand on his wife’s waist. "Let him go long enough to take off the armor. Then you can hug him again, I promise," he said.

"Ollie, I’m sorry, you, you must be hurt," Lilee said, pulling back as she searched her son’s face for traces of pain. "Come in, come in," she said, pulling him toward one of the room’s overstuffed chairs. "Please, you shouldn’t... I mean..."

"It’s fine," Ollie said, reaching out with one hand to hold his mother’s hand and the other to hold his father’s. Whether it was the faint redness and roughness from working in the manor laundry, the calluses and bruises that accompanied working with horses, or the faint burn scars from the kitchen hearths, all three of their hands had been marked by years of service in Lothian Manor, but they held each other tightly as Ollie moved toward the chair.

"Thank you, Sir Cynwrig, for keeping them safe," Ollie said, smiling warmly at the other knight. "If anything had gone wrong, I wouldn’t have been able to forgive myself..."

"It was a quiet night for us," Cynwrig said as he stepped close enough to Ollie to help with the laces of the younger knight’s coat of mail. "Warm food and idle conversation, nothing more than that," he said, hoping to put Sir Ollie at ease.

"He means that he and your father spent half the day talking about horses," Lady Cerys said, teasing her husband before she turned to her son. "Dalwyn, can you be a good squire for your father and Sir Ollie? They both need help with their armor. Do you remember how?"

"I remember," Dalwyn said, eagerly rushing out from under the blankets to help his father and his hero with their armor.

Standing beside the hearth, Eira waited as patiently as she could, even though she wanted nothing more than to ask for news of the battle and how it had ended. The fact that Ollie came here in peace told her a great deal. If things had gone badly, they’d be rushing to escape rather than pulling off armor.

Just because they’d been victorious, however, didn’t mean that there hadn’t been losses, and an anxious gasp escaped her lips when Ollie finally slipped out of his mail coat, revealing a gambeson dyed red with his own blood at the shoulder where a poleaxe had bitten into Ollie’s arm.

Ollie winced in discomfort as the movement reminded him of the wound he’d all but forgotten about with everything else happening this evening. At the time, his mind had been clouded by the fury of the Blood Acorn, and ever since then, he’d been moving from one tense moment to the next, but now, fresh blood flowed as the movements of removing his armor pulled at the wound.

"You are hurt..." Lilee said, stepping forward before she paused uncertainly while Ollie worked at the rest of his armor.

"Here," Eira said, stepping up beside Ollie’s mother and guiding her toward one of the chests in the room. "I don’t imagine the household staff is ready to fetch us bandages, but there should be spare linens we can cut down for him, and I could use a hand preparing them," she offered, even though she didn’t really need the help.

"Oh, right, um, your ladyship, I can help," Lilee said, only reluctantly taking her eyes off her son.

"How bad is it, Sir Ollie?" Cynwrig asked directly as he started helping with the laces at the back of the younger knight’s gambeson. "I don’t have any Essence of Poppy for pain, but there’s a bottle of strong wine if you think it would help," he offered.

"It’s not that bad," Ollie said, shaking his head and moving his arm as little as possible as Cynwrig and Dalwyn helped him out of the emerald green and midnight blue gambeson. "As long as I don’t reach above my shoulder, it’s manageable," he said in a statement that sounded excessively humble but was truer than most people in the room believed, especially when they saw how much blood had seeped into the sleeve and chest of the tunic he wore beneath the gambeson.

"I have scissors if you’d rather we cut the tunic off," Eira offered as she approached, carrying a basin of warm water with Lilee trailing in her wake. "I’ve helped in the healer’s tents after a winter raid or two," she said, looking a bit embarrassed as she confessed to where she’d acquired her skills.

"I know that you’re far more skilled than I am, Sir Ollie," Eira said with a brief glance at Lady Cerys. "But let us at least help get you cleaned up before you... Um, before you tend to your wounds..."

Ollie barely seemed to notice what she’d said, however. He’d stopped truly hearing anything after he’d heard her mention scissors to cut off his tunic... The tunic that suddenly felt like the last layer of armor protecting him from something far more dangerous than enemy swords or spears...

The tunic that was the only thing preventing his parents from seeing his Mark of the Witch.