The Tempest Read Online Free PDF Page A

wall, right near the sleeping girl’s head. At the shattering sound, she jumped and cried out in shock.
    “Sir Guy! You are awake!”
    Just that simple act, that brief outburst of rage, was enough to drain every ounce of his energy. Falling back against the pillows, he gasped for breath…even as he sneered at the girl.
    “You will address me properly, woman. And I demand to know what is happening here. What are you about? Why am I in such a state?”
    He started to cough, his mouth plagued with dryness. She came close, moving cautiously as she brought him a cup of water, from which he drank greedily. His thirst slaked for the moment, he turned his eyes to the woman at his side. Between intakes of breath…and he struggled for them…his demands were strong.
    “Will you not answer me?”
    She put the cup aside and dabbed his mouth with a cloth.
    “You had an accident. You fell through the ice of the lake.”
    “I know that!” he shouted. “But why am I in a peasant hovel? Why was I not taken back to Nottingham?”
    Dunking a rag in a bucket of water, wringing it out, she brought it to his face and gently wiped his skin.
    “Snow storms have been raging off and on. It would have been an impossible journey. And even if we had attempted to take you back, it would have been too difficult a task for my father and I alone.”
    “What of my men? Were they so incompetent? Did they flee at the very moment I was in need?”
    “All were drowned, my lord. You alone survived.”
    As he took in her words, a middle-aged man came rushing in. Like the woman, he was dark-haired, except for the silver hair at his temples and the grey in his beard. His eyes were wide with worry, but the girl turned to him calmly.
    “All is well, father. It was an accident, ‘tis all. I broke the pitcher. Go now, and sleep.”
    The man hesitated a moment. Then he nodded, leaving them.
    As he went, Guy suddenly recalled more of what had happened…the sight of his men and their horses, falling through the collapsing ice. But he had lived. And this lowly woman and her father had found him, rescuing him from the jaws of death.
    But he could find no joy in being brought back from the brink. What good was it when he was in such pain as he was?
    Trying to adjust himself against the pillows, he found that even the smallest movement caused him terrible pain…and he glared at the woman who, in his eyes, was responsible for a good part of his suffering.
    “You were a fool to make the effort. Because of your ignorance I must live in this useless condition. Do not be so unwise as to expect my gratitude.” He turned his eyes away from her, wishing her to feel the sting of his displeasure…to be hurt by it.
    But she said nothing, quietly bending down to pick up the broken pieces of pottery…and her calmness irritated him. She wasn’t supposed to react this way. She was supposed to cower in fear, to beg his forgiveness for her ineptness. It was what his subordinates had always done. While she silently tended to the mess, he reached up to massage a spot on the back of his head. He could feel the gash there, and the thread keeping it closed. It throbbed with pain and itched like mad. And it was then that he felt his hair, cropped much too close to his scalp. It made him scowl all the more, and he looked to the woman, his demand fierce.
    “What have you done to me?”
    She glanced up from her place on the floor. “My lord?”
    “You have sheared me like a sheep,” he snarled at her. “I lie here subjugated, garbed in this lowly peasant nightdress. What game of degradation do you play at?”
    She came to stand near him, shaking her head. “I play at no game. We cropped your hair to tend to your head wounds. Your clothing is too burdensome to tend you in. It is why we have put the nightdress on you. You will be easier to care for.”
    He sneered at her noble gesture.
    “As I said, your heroics were a wasted effort. I suffer more because of your folly. And my