20th November 1102

The fire was waning, the coals glowing with a faint, dusky red as the heat began to fade. The half-blackened log lay, partially devoured by a fervour that had now all but dissipated.

She gripped the poker as tightly as her weakened fingers would allow. Such a bother that now, in order to hold something she had to concentrate so hard on the various muscles in her hand. These days, so easily would things slide unwarranted from her fumbling grasp and clatter to the floor.

And she did not wish to wake her husband who was even now, moaning in his sleep. The pain, she imagined was very great. How must it feel, to have one’s arm pulled so neatly from its socket. She had heard the wrenching, popping sound when Garrick and Eallair had managed to slide it back into place. The pain must have been unbearable but her husband, his face white with agony, beads of sweat rolling down his forehead had not made a sound. Later, she had softly kissed his mouth and found it bloody where he had mashed his lip between gritted teeth.

She found her mind dwelling often now on the nature of pain. The nights when she lay awake coughing and hacking until it felt as though her lungs were being slowly detached from her ribcage to be spat out in the basin with the blood and the phlegm.

She prodded defiantly at the log, knocking off a lump of charcoal to expose some untouched wood. The fire flared eagerly in response, sending up a shower of embers and ash. The tiny portion of ash she breathed in was enough to make Isaura choke, a desperate need to cough rising up in her like the flames licking against the stone walls of the fireplace.

She carefully cleared her throat, an almost silent rasping, like the sound of the maid, scraping piles of dead ash from the fireplace floor. It was not nearly enough but it would have to do. She tried to ignore the dreadful need that was growing inside her chest and focus her attentions on the fire. It was a frigid night, the wind howling outside and their chambers were far from windproof, tiny tendrils of freezing air winding their way in through the gaps. But at least it was not damp. The ship had been dank, the air moist and tinged with salt that crusted the insides of her nostrils and crept its way inside her lungs making her splutter.

Thinking about it made her want to cough again. How she wanted to cough. She cleared her throat ineffectually. The dreadful tickle remained, as though she had accidentally swallowed a spider and in its death throes it had lodged somewhere at the base of her neck. Some days she felt like clawing it open, tearing the soft flesh with her fingernails until she could finally reach her fingers deep inside and stop the neverending aggravation.

Other days she would hack and splutter and cough until she finally heaved up the contents of her spasming stomach. And always, when the paroxysm had left her gazing from the splattered basin to her face in the mirror, a ghoulish mask with blood flecked lips. It was a face she hardly recognised, haggard and drawn, huge eyes staring back at her with pity.

Perhaps if she lay down the urge would pass. She shuffled slowly over to the bed, hoisting herself up beside her husband soundlessly.

He mumbled in his sleep, his body in its unknowing slumber trying to roll onto his injured shoulder. He grunted in pain, body chastised, searched for a more comfortable position.

His pain. Her pain. It seemed more and more difficult not to view the world through the red haze that surrounded them like a funeral shroud, growing tighter every day. Life. Pain. The two had become so inseparable, but then had they not always been so? Life was begun in pain, the agony of childbirth as her daughter had ripped away from her body leaving a sudden empty void she did not know she possessed. Pain in Yvaine’s needy suckling, desperately trying to draw nourishment from her mother’s withered body.

Choking she struggled into a sitting postion, drawing her knees to her chest. She could feel it building inside her, the dry, scratchy feeling in her throat as though tiny pieces of dirt were sticking to the edges. She could feel them rattling around with every breath, scouring the tender flesh inside.

As far back as she could remember pain had always been there with her. A silent, impartial presence, waiting in the shadows for her to stumble and fall. He had been there when the tooth had grown through twisted and wrong, his hands grasped helpfully around the surgeon’s as he tugged and pulled until at last it came loose in a welter of blood. He was there when she was thrown from her horse, his neuralgic hands running lovingly over her sprawled body. He had lain beside them in the bed his dark eyes upon her as she had been made a wife with one agonising thrust.

He was with her now every day, his hands at her throat, his fingertips pressing against her temples, his hot hand resting on her brow as the fever mounted. He would be there too, at the end, his searing body coiled against hers until he finally surrended her to death’s icy embrace.

She spluttered, suddenly unable to hold back the cough that was explosively clawing its way from her throat. It was such a profound relief, she coughed again, breathing deep into her burning lungs.

“Mmphf,” Lochan mumbled, his eyes flicking open.

He tried to sit up, groaning in surprise at the pain in his shoulder.

“Careful Lochan,” she mumbled, ashamed that she had woken him.

He slowly raised himself on his good arm, awkwardly wriggling into a sitting position. He carefully slid over to where she was sitting.

“How’s it going there my little dove,” he murmured gently stroking her knee with his good arm.

She stared mournfully at him, “I’m sorry for waking you.”

“Don’t be sorry darling, sleep is overrated anyway. Just full of unpleasant dreams.”

His face was hidden from her in the shadows but she could see his despair from the slump of his shoulders and the way his head was slightly bowed.

“Did you have another nightmare dearest?”

He turned away in shame, and in the half light cast from the glow of the embers she saw a fleeting expression of grief before his face hardened again, jaw set, shoulders squared.

She gazed at the contours of his back, the knotted muscles, the gentle humps of his vertebrae processing down the length of his spine. Tenderly she stroked her trembling fingers along his back, they passed like pallid ghosts flitting over the dark expanse of mottled, bruised skin.

“It’s not your fault you know.”

He sighed, slumping lower, so that the ridges of his spine stood out even more in stark relief. She carefully ran her fingers along them, as though her tender kneading could remove them like lumps in unmoulded dough.

“It’s not your fault”, she repeated softly, gently turning him towards her.

She kissed him tenderly, her lips barely brushing against his. His face was wet with silent tears that had run down catching in the net of his beard.

She nuzzled against him, feeling the soft rasping of his beard against the translucent skin of her face. Even the delicate scratch of tiny bristles hurt, as though the gentle scraping might finally wear through the thin skin stretched too tightly over the bones that lay beneath.

“Isaura,” he mumbled thickly, kissing her more forcefully.

It was only at these times, when she was consumed in the ecstasy of his kiss that she could forget about the pain. Her husband’s warm mouth pressed against hers, breathing in his hot panting breath so that she was warmed from the inside out.

Even when he lay above her, moving inside her, if his lips left hers for even an instant the pain flooded back, molten and burning as though punishing her for denying it for even a brief moment. In his kiss she could forget. In his kiss pain was left behind to sulk in the corner like a rejected child.

She carefully tipped him back onto the pillows, her mouth never leaving his. He shivered in silent discomfort as she accidentally bumped his injured shoulder.

She kissed him harder for perhaps he too could find that place, free of pain in the passion of their kiss. Her fingers found their way through the tangle of his hair to gently support his head as she laid him down. She felt him shudder beneath her as his injured shoulder grazed against the pillow.

She lay above him, supporting the weight of her frail body on a trembling arm. It felt strange, he had always been the strong one and now his body lay quivering beneath her, more vulnerable than ever before. She had never felt so close to him, the tendrils of their pain winding them together like vines on a trellis.

She broke free of the kiss to stare down at his tear stained face. He gazed searchingly up at her, his grey eyes uncertain and afraid. She felt as though he were stripping her bare, peeling off layer by sodden layer to get to the core, and the deep centre of pain that pulsed and throbbed there.

“My dearest,” he whispered pulling her towards him with his good arm.

And when he kissed her she knew he understood.