The Wolf and the Snake (English version)

Chapter 2

Aurel isn't in the mood to run into brigands at this late hour; he would destroy them with a few savage sword thrusts.

His status as a Templar makes it much easier to enter the St. John's Knights. After all, don't they die together on the battlefield?

A matron agrees to take him to the wounded woman discovered on the beach in the Levant who remains unconscious. The good woman thinks, as does everyone else, of a terrible shipwreck. She shows Aurel a small bed, partly hidden by hangings.

The Templar approaches silently.

But it's not Ada, and this stranger isn't that pretty.

Disappointment tightens his heart despite him. He's about to leave when the matron makes him great hand signs.

Unfortunately, she made a mistake with the patient.

"This one was lying in a dark alley, not on the beach! The physician will come soon," she announces with a smile as if apologizing.

Aurel feels like one of those little cloth balls in which seamstresses prick their pins. The other wounded has her face on the side, and her beautiful scattered hair masks her features.

With trembling hands and a dry throat, the Templar delicately pushes back a few golden locks. He recognizes the high cheekbones, the perfect line of the lips, the long dark lashes. He notes that she's very pale and plunged into a deep sleep.

He imagines events as best he can.

A terrible shipwreck, of course!

Why didn't he receive any letter from his mother informing him of the couple's return to Palestine?

But mail is often late.

"I have to wait until she wakes up to find out more," he concludes for himself, placing a light finger on the sleeping woman's forehead.

Then he takes with emotion one of the tiny hands, wholly bandaged.

Gabriel of Edessa went to the women's floor to see the visitor. He's curious to meet this man who claims to be the cousin of the unfortunate Ada of Chasseney. He considers her a precious friend and former collaborator, so he intends to protect her from ventures of a stranger, even if he's a Templar.

"And so, my lord, are you a familiar of our wounded one?" he questions with an undisguised distrust.

"Absolutely," Aurel replies curtly. "Why doesn't she wake up?"

"I don't know," the physician sadly admits. "She has many cuts and probably several fractures. I also deplore a large wound on her back. And something is strange!"

"What do you mean?" Aurel asks, still as snippy, arrogant, not to say highly nervous.

"Well, during the hours following her arrival at the hospital, I noticed that the wound was closing abnormally."

"Abnormally?" Aurel repeats without understanding.

"It was very fast, abnormally fast," Gabriel of Edessa answers. "Then it stopped, and the body resumed a normal healing process. But unfortunately, as long as she remains unconscious, I don't know if she suffered any internal injuries. And I have no news of her husband. I don't even know if he was with her during the shipwreck."

"The most urgent thing is for her to recover," Aurel stresses with a frown.

It will be time to take care of where his cousin can be.

The Templar got to stay with Ada for this night. He ordered Gabriel of Edessa to keep the young woman's identity a secret as long as there was no information on the whys and wherefores of this affair.

The matrons came to feed the wounded woman while she slept with a light broth. They carefully supported her head and slipped a cow's horn pierced at the end between her teeth.

At daybreak, they return with some copper basin to wash the patients. Then, finally, Aurel has to leave, but not without checking that Ada is breathing peacefully.

According to Gabriel of Edessa, the young woman's body suffered terrible ordeals from which it must recover to escape its comatose state.

The Templar plans to move Ada when she wakes up to a quieter place, a house he could rent discreetly and where she would recover. Aurel hasn't yet made any bequests to the order since his noble mother still lives in Campemy. So he has half the rights and royalties generated by the seigneury. These are considerable sums of money that are rarely spent. Aurel doesn't boast about them to avoid a possible sanction because a Templar has to be poor.

But his thoughts fly far from the penance that could be inflicted upon him.

He provides to revisit Ada in the evening; maybe she'll be better.

And he would like her to see him when she opens her beautiful dark eyes.

That she finally sees him!

For almost two weeks, Aurel spends every night at the St. John's Knights Hospital. He learns to patiently feed the injured woman, allowing himself discreet caresses on her cheek or forehead, telling her that he's there for her, that she's safe now.

It sounds like she hears his words.

Sleeping like that, with her beautiful hair free, he gives her barely sixteen or seventeen years. Time seems to have no hold on the pretty Ada when it withers hard on most women.

He thinks back to that day when she had visited him in the Templars' quarter. How could he confess to her his secret dreams where he possessed her passionately, where she finally realized that it was him she loved and not his damn cousin?

Usually, he woke with his heart beating, swept away by the shame, the frustration of desiring so much a girl who was becoming a ghost because she had crossed the sea without return.

Then Aurel doesn't want to lose anything of this gorgeous face, this magnificent body.

He enjoys every moment with her as a gift from the Lord, a thousand-year-old treasure for which many men would be forced to kill.

And when the beautiful dark eyes barely open, he knows that the passion will burn him, will always devour him.

Ada will remain engraved in letters of fire in his Templar's heart.

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