"Little Mouse," Isabeau whispered softly. "What is wrong?"
Phillipe heard the words and his fever addled mind wanted him to be weak. He couldn't speak, could only respond to the hug by leaning his face against her delicate shoulder. She held him a moment and then her cool hand touched his forehead and she frowned.
"You have a fever." She gripped his upper arm. "Tell we where you've been injured? What happened, Phillipe?"
"Wolf," he told her.
She wrinkled her nose. "You were attacked by a wolf? When?"
He furrowed his brow and looked up at her with earnest eyes. "I miss you."
She tried to keep her patience. "We have missed you too... Phillipe, you need to speak to me."
"I am speaking," he said. "If I were not speaking, no words would leave my mouth. I hear words. If I did not hear words... I would be deaf. Have you fallen deaf, M'lady?"
"Oh my God, Phillipe," her tone was laced with both frustration and affection. "Have you been hurt?"
His long lashed eyes slid closed and he let his head flop against the tree bark. "Mortally," he said.
Isabeau's eyes shot wide with alarm. "What? How?" Her hands began to touch his arms, searching. "You aren't making any sense."
Phillipe floated out of consciousness momentarily until Isabeau felt a surge of panic.
She said his name again and touched his face. The slightest bit of invisible stubble brushed her finger tips, a reminder that although he looked a boy, her friend actually straddled the cusp of manhood. "Where are you hurt, Phillipe?"
His dark eyes opened and she sank back in relief.
"My heart," he told her.
She started to roll her eyes at the hyperbole, but touched his chest and he flinched. She lifted his tunic and her breath caught. The ugly scratches from that night on the ice stood out in an angry red bas relief against his pale skin. "Ohhh. Oh no."
His assertion that a wolf had injured him suddenly made sense. She grabbed his hand and pulled at it. "You need to stand, Little Mouse. We need to find you help...to Imperius. To someone who knows what to do."
He didn't move. He didn't even attempt to move. Isabeau stood up and tugged harder on his hand.
"I have played my part in the story, m'lady. Time to let me go." It was said so softly, she barely heard him.
"Don't say such nonsense! Get on your feet."
He didn't answer her and she pleaded with him some more. "I cannot carry you. You must try, Phillipe!" Her voice trembled and she blinked back tears. "Try! For me. For me. Try."
"I'm tired, milady," came the soft whisper.
"Of course you are," she sat down beside him, leaned into his side and put her arm around his neck. "You're ill. You need rest, but not here. Not under a tree in the rain."
Phillipe felt her warmth. The pleasure of being beside her, even through his fog of fever and pain.
Suddenly Isabeau kissed his cheek and he opened his eyes to focus on her once more. He looked mildly confused and wholly innocent. She knew the innocence was an illusion.
"I am going to find someone to help us," she told him. "I will be back as soon as I can."
"Don't leave," he whispered. "Please m'lady."
Isabeau touched the top of his head and was gone.
Phillipe was accustomed to people leaving him, never to return. Whether by death-like his mother-or abandonment, like his father. Like any other person he'd ever loved or trusted. Eventually, he found it less painful if he was the one that left first. "The truth is, no one can hurt me if I've already abandoned them. Only a fool sticks around to find out. "
He knew that somewhere there was a great gap of logic in that plan- still it was the one that had kept him alive. But now, he was forced to wait on Isabeau, as helpless to move as he was that first night that she found him lashed to a tree and he charmed her into letting him go, so that he could run.
Long ago, he'd learned that that his charisma was his greatest weapon. The dexterity to dodge and weave and hide and steal that had earned him the nickname of 'The Mouse' was really second to his charm.
His way with words, how he could bend them to his will at a moment's notice, his smile, his sweet dark eyes- those were his true weapons. And yet, despite them, every person in his life had eventually left him. Betrayed him. And some part of his mind whispered that Isabeau had just done the same.
If she had, then the truth was he didn't want to live anymore. Not if Beauty had abandoned him once he was no longer of use. His heart could not take that.
"Good God, Abraham!" Imperius's voice split the countryside as his wagon rolled to a halt. "Do not make me get off this blasted wagon."
The donkey paid him no heed and ducked his head to graze. Imperius waved his lash at him and swore. He promised to beat the donkey into the ground. He cursed him and three generations of his progeny. He leaned forward at an awkward angle on his dilapidated cart and smacked the furry brown rump with his fingertips.
Abraham flicked his tail and kept eating.
Imperius burst out with a string of expletives and took a swig of his wine sack. "You cursed beast. God has given me stewardship over you to atone for my sins, I swear it."
The voice inside himself, that Imperius called God, had grown firmer in its insistence that he start moving. It told him to pack his supplies and head toward Aquila. He was puzzled. He'd finished his task. He'd corrected his wrongs.
And, yet, the voice inside him told him that he was needed. That he had not yet fulfilled his purpose. Something told him that mending things between Isabeau and Navarre was only the beginning. He was needed elsewhere.
And so when God spoke, Imperius begrudgingly listened. He had no choice, being His servant as it were. What he did not know is that the thing he was really searching for was a little mouse.