A/N: Thanks again to LadyKate for looking over this chapter.
Bound Home
Chapter 11
I met you often when you were visiting princes
And when you were playing in noblemen's halls.
...Spring passes... Far down the river now,
I find you alone under falling petals.
-Du Fu, On Meeting Li Guinian Down the River
This time when she comes, he is not caught so completely off guard. The surprise of her presence in Acre has worn off, and he has prepared himself for a chance meeting – but he is not prepared for a deliberate knock on his door. When he asks for a name, a firm voice, muffled by the thick wood, responds.
"Saffiya."
He frowns and, for a moment, is at a loss. The name is unfamiliar. The voice, slightly less so. But he's only stalling, waiting for his mind to catch up with his intuition and verify what he already knows – there's really only one person it could be.
At least he has a name now.
He slides back the bolt and opens the door. It is indeed the Saracen healer, and she surprises him again by slipping past him and walking into his room before he can say a word.
He half-twists, looking at some point over his shoulder near where she stands, thinking. He should, by all rights, be grabbing her by the scruff and tossing her back into the alley that runs along this row of rented rooms.
But he only sighs, and closes the door. He throws the bolt out of habit, and stares at it for a long moment, gathering himself for this next trial, this next test of his still-fragile patience. He had found a measure of peace in England, with Robin and his brother, but coming back to the desert has pulled apart the stitches in his badly-mended wounds. This place, where all his nightmares were created, where they still thrive in the dark corners of his dreams, has thrown him outside of that peace. He has felt himself being shaken into his old temper, and now the Saracen's boldness is stretching his limits.
He turns, and gestures with a limp hand at the only chair in the room. "Sit, if you'd like."
She watches him warily and remains silent; that such a fearless woman is now pretending at fear needles him. He lets his arm drop back to his side and shakes his head. "Or just tell me what you've come to say," he emends, moving past her to take a seat on his bed. "Either way, I suggest you hurry." He crosses his arms, pins her with a stare, and waits.
She at last seems to loosen. To his faint surprise, she pulls the chair away from his small desk and sits.
Her lavender hijab is the only spot of color in the sparsely filled room. Her large, almond-shaped eyes seem even darker against her pale head covering, and he reflects that she is now a far cry from the pitiful, unkempt runaway that the sheriff had once so prized. Looking back, he thinks to himself that, despite her small frame and wild condition, she always had the same defiant air that surrounds her now. It is calmer, perhaps, just as his own pride has been drained by time and neglect – but still very much with her. She sits on the edge of the chair, hands locked together, back straight. Her eyes meet his.
"I want to know what you are doing here. Are you with the sheriff?" Her voice falls flat against the bare walls, making her seem nearer than she really is.
"No."
"You are alone?"
He hesitates. He is on his own, and if the girl has something planned, it wouldn't do to advertise his vulnerability...
But those are old instincts talking. Echoes of a past he wants to forget. He shrugs off the sheriff's whispers (lepers, Gisborne)and answers her calmly. "Yes, I'm here alone. Does that satisfy you?"
She narrows her eyes. "I am not planning on killing anybody, either," she replies, throwing back at him his words from their last meeting.
He blinks at the ceiling to give himself time to control his mounting irritation. "Then why have you come?"
For a moment, she is silent. He resists the urge to lean forward, to get a closer look at the emotions that are warring on her face. He doesn't want to appear interested. She lifts her chin. "Will you tell me how things go on in Nottingham? I know it does not please you to think on Robin Hood, but-"
He sighs, and interrupts her. "He was alive and well last I saw him." Without thought, he runs a finger down his face where there is a long, shallow scar, created by Hood's knife - and by his own madness. "Is that enough? Or do you want to know more?"
A light frown creases her brow. "You would tell me?"
He shrugs one shoulder. "Would it get you out of my room?"
For a long moment, they stare at one another, he forcing an air of complacency, she obviously struggling to figure out how much further she can push him. She somehow figures correctly, because she leans back in the chair and says, "Will you tell me why you have come here? I have asked before. You have not answered me yet."
"Why does it matter to you? I told you you're in no danger."
"It would ease my mind," she replies, a bit sharply.
His tone takes on an edge as well as his patience begins to thin. "How."
"You've been to this land twice before, planning to do terrible things. Now you say you are simply here...visiting? You are living among old enemies. Alone. Changed, I think. It begs to be explained."
"It bothers you this much, my reason for being here."
"I am a child of science," she says with a hint of a smile. "I seek answers."
An ache flares deep in his chest, a wild urge to protect his most painful of secrets. He stands and says, "Seek them elsewhere."
"Please," she says, standing up to meet him in the middle of the small room. "I did not come here to start up an old war."
"Right. You were just 'curious'," he sneers.
"No," she says. "Not 'just'. I think I understand your reasons." He scoffs, but she presses on. "Perhaps you were exiled. Perhaps you lost the sheriff's favor and needed to flee, but why here? Why come to Acre? It is Marianthat called you here. It must be."
She sounds certain. He glares at her with eyes that are just on the verge of burning - who is this woman, to come to his rooms and pry apart his mind, his heart, to dig out his deepest miseries and bare them before his eyes as though it is nothing? His hands go rigid, struggling to hold in the urge to push her away. To push it allaway.
But she remains as she was - subdued, calm. The accusations he expected her to unleash are absent, and in their place is a strange, waiting silence.
His anger flees, a starved and weak creature after these five years of almost-happiness with Robin and Archer. He runs a hand through his hair and then lets it fall to slap against his thigh. His demeanor, he supposes, is confirmation enough, because the Saracen nods and says quietly, "I understand you a little better now, at least."
"You understand me?" he echoes, voice heavy with weary disbelief. "You could not possibly."
"Do not doubt me on this," she replies, with a sharpness that surprises him. "As if you are the only one to have suffered."
He stares at her, mouth hanging slightly open, wondering at what nerve he has just touched. Her eyes are fiery, and then, slowly, the fire fades, and she clutches her hijab to her chest and seems to stare through him as if he is no longer even in the room. In the dusty haze of afternoon sun, he can see something endless and empty in her eyes. "I know what thoughts," she says faintly. "I know what dreams..."
He stands close enough to her to hear her breathe, to study the slight tremor in her hands, to trace the sadness in the lines of her mouth. His wariness has vanished, and in its place is confusion. Fascination.
"Do you?" he murmurs. She lifts her gaze, now looking into his eyes – and the moment passes. She is composed again, closed off. She goes to the door, and as he reaches over her to slide the bolt free, she pulls her hijab closer about her face, pauses in the doorway, and asks, "Do you go to her often?"
He clenches his jaw against the swelling pain in his breast. It hurts to talk about her, hurts so much, too much, as if the day she died is only ever just behind him. "Yes," he says.
The sun has begun to burn the sky with orange clouds. He watches the people milling about in the alley long after the Saracen has gone.
A saffron seed lies cracked open on her desk. Through her magnifying glass, she studies the germ inside. No hint of the saffron's fragrance drifts to her nose - that treasure remains for the autumn blooms to reveal, and the land is far from autumn. She prods at the shell, and wonders if something might be gained from crushing it into a powder, perhaps creating a paste.
Kalid encourages her curiosity. A master physician himself, he has taught her time and again the value of outstretched thought, of casting a net of ideas into the field of science to see what might turn up. She has no direction to her musings this morning – she simply saw a jar of seeds on the shelf and decided to see what could result from experimenting with them. It is a way to pass the time until a patient arrives, and a way to focus her thoughts so they don't keep straying to a room on the other side of the city.
Gisborne. Their conversation took an unexpected turn. She thought she would be in control, a neutral inquisitor, impassive. But talking of Marian brought back other memories.
She is still amazed at how suddenly and swiftly the pain of Will's death can overpower her.
She feels an unexpected sympathy for Gisborne that, under different circumstances, she would never allow – but death leaves tight bonds of suffering in its wake. And she is not heartless.
She drops a handful of seeds into her pestle. The sound of rock grinding against itself, and of dry seed husks cracking into fine powder, fills the room. It is the sound of her childhood. How many hours she would sit with her father in a room just like this one, watching him grind herbs or boil leaves...
Do you have my book, Saffiya?
Yes, abba.
Write this down for me: for every four quantities of olive oil, mix in two quantities of myrrh.
What does that do?
Finish writing, then come here and I will explain it to you.
She blows out a heavy sigh.
Gisborne has given her such confusion, and she wishes greatly that her father was here now to give her some direction. What to make of a man who murders the woman he claims to love...and then buries himself in the land of her death, after five years have gone by?
If only men were as easily tested as matter - if only there was some formula to apply to their thinking. She shakes her head, frustrated with her own swirling thoughts. Frustrated with the silence in her rooms. Frustrated that all of these problems are now hers alone, and there is no one who can help her, because they have all been taken from her, and the world is still turning without them, relentless and uncaring.
The mortar suddenly becomes a gray blur. She looks up from her work to wipe her eyes, and is surprised when her hand comes away wet with tears.
She stares at the expanse of her worn desk. A myriad of medicines and books rest upon it, many of them inherited from her father.
She stares at the empty spaces where there was once happiness, purpose, hope.
"Abba," she says, knowing he cannot hear, but moved by some deep desperation to give him a chance to answer.
Of course, there is only silence. She takes in a long, slow breath, and leans back in her chair.
Will. Will, I'm going mad.
She buries her hands in her hair and closes her eyes. It is frighteningly easy to imagine that he is only in the next room, and that it is quiet only because he sleeps.