Heaven's Fire by Patricia Ryan Read Free Book Online

been awake. He reached out and stroked her face, still reddened but much cooler to the touch. Perhaps the sweat therapy had worked after all!
    “I learned it on Crusade,” he said. “After I was captured and imprisoned. One of my cellmates was an Englishman, and he taught it to me. His name was Thorne Falconer. He’s Baron of Blackburn now, and my brother by marriage.”
    “The Saxon baron,” she said, sitting up and adjusting the quilt around herself. “Aye, I’ve heard of him. How long were you imprisoned?”
    “A year. It was...” He shook his head. How could he possibly describe it? And why, after years of silence about that hellish time, did he want to speak of it to this woman he hardly knew?
    Her eyes, shining with curiosity and compassion and native intelligence, searched his. “You must have very sad memories,” she said quietly.
    “My memories of the men I killed are far worse than those of imprisonment. I thought of them as infidels, as less than human. I thought ‘twas God’s will that they be slain.” He swallowed the bitter reminiscence and shook his head. “I gained my freedom and returned to Paris, but my faith had been undermined. Mother Church had sent me halfway around the world to do an evil thing, and I found I could never trust her teachings again. Nothing was ever the same after that.”
    “Yet you took your vows.”
    He nodded. “I was educated for the priesthood, and I thought, perhaps in time, my faith would grow strong again. Instead, it slowly weakened, until...” He took in a lungful of hot air. “I returned to the Holy Land last year as a pilgrim, thinking that would help, but it’s hopeless.”
    “All this melancholy because you killed trying to retake the Holy Land?” she asked. “Don’t you think killing is justified sometimes?”
    “Nay. Not anymore.”
    “How awful to live with such torment,” she said. “And how silly.”
    Rainulf let out a disbelieving little laugh. “Silly?”
    “You make everything so complicated, so troublesome. You can’t accept anything for what it is.”
    “Constance... you really don’t understand.”
    She laughed and waved her hand in airy dismissal. “I understand much more than you realize.” Her gaze traveled to the book in his lap. “What do you think of it?”
    He closed it and ran his hand over the lavishly embroidered cover. “I think it’s extraordinary. Where did you learn to do such work?”
    “Father Osred, of course. He used to copy books for himself, and also some to sell in Oxford. But by the time I came to live with him, his hands had become all gnarly and sore.”
    “So he taught you copying and illuminating,” Rainulf finished. “And Latin as well, I take it?”
    “Aye. I love making books—the pictures especially.” She nodded toward the Biblia Pauperum . “I’ve just finished that one. It’s my masterwork. If I do die, at least I’ll know I’ve done something special first.”
    “It’s very special,” he said, rising to return the book to its cupboard. “‘Twas good of Father Osred to teach you this craft.”
    Constance regarded him thoughtfully as he replaced the volume and squatted next to the fire, stirring it up with the poker. She said, “You probably think... You must think I’m a... a common woman. A whore.”
    He set the poker aside and wiped his sweaty hands on his chausses. “It’s not my place to pass judgment on you, Constance.”
    “Aye, but I know what you think.”
    He looked her straight in the eye and said quietly, “No, you don’t.” Moving closer to her, he gently tucked a stray hair behind her ear. “Our thoughts are private. And our actions, even if they be sinful, are rarely without cause. God understands this. It’s men who don’t.”
    She inspected him with discerning eyes. “You don’t talk like other priests, Father.”
    “I’m not like other priests,” he said soberly.
    “Do you want to be?”
    “Oh, yes. Yes. Very much. I want their easy faith,