The Lady at the River's Edge

28 - The Flood

The rain endured, in sheer mockery of their presumption.

With the sun hidden Erzsebet had no measure of time's passage, save the ever-tightening knot which hunger made of her stomach. About noon (by such rough guessing), with the rain still showing no sign of abating, they decided to eat the mushrooms, the last of their food. The texture was positively vile, soggy and fibrous, and the taste was little better, but it was worth such unpleasantness to placate her stomach. For all the scrunching of her nose and working of her tongue to clear the taste, she would have gladly eaten three more.

Alas, now they had nothing.

The sparse meal granted but a short reprieve. Trapped as she was with nothing else to distract her, Erzsebet's focus could only spiral upon her unsatisfied appetite. Her hunger came to take on a bestial aspect, free of human rule, and she began weighing the prospect of venturing deeper into the cave in search of something to eat against that of roaming back out in the rain.

In echo of her earlier wild sense of liberation, she imagined stripping bare once more and sprinting out of the cave into the storm, feeling the flood of heaven upon her skin, giving herself up to nature's wrath and bounty.

With this image in her mind, she reached a tentative hand out of the cave's mouth. The chill violence which pelted her palm quickly struck such wild notions from her.

Janos glanced at her as she pulled back her hand, and read quickly what was in her thoughts. "I'll go look for food, my lady," he announced. Before she could reply, he slid his splinted arm from his sling and began removing his tunic.

"Wait, wait!" Erzsebet cried, as Janos made to take off his smock as well. "What are you doing?"

He stopped and looked at her. "My clothes are nearly dried, my lady, and I'd rather they remain so. I'll keep my braies on, of course."

She hadn't even been thinking of his trousers, yet now it was a struggle to keep from glancing down at them. "No, I, I mean..." What did she mean? What did she want to say? Why was she suddenly so worked up and tongue-tied? "You–you said an animal might be here, or might come. Should I really be left alone?"

"Long as the storm has run, I think any beast that might seek shelter has already found it," the knight answered, his tone and bearing calm in counterpoint to her turbulence. "The same for any creature that might already be here: if there was something that would wake at our intrusion, it would already have done so." So sure he was in his logic, she found herself annoyed at him, simply for not sharing her confusion. "I can leave the knife with you, if you wish," he concluded.

"No, no," she demurred, her irritation lending some stability to her manner. "You might need that, depending on what you find out there." She drew herself up, already rid and scornful of her brief foolishness. "Besides, I have your sword–that is all I need."

He glanced down where his weapon lay, sheathed again after he had spent an hour treating it–Erzsebet had been irked to learn he had purchased oil for his sword, when he might have bought more food. A smile crept across his lips as he eyed the blade, but all mockery of her martial powers went unsaid. "As you wish, my lady. Then, if I may?" Again he brought his good hand to the hem of his smock, and this time Erzsebet waved her acquiescence.

In a flash, the knight was bare-chested, and Erzsebet was caught between the impulse to look away and the desire to appear coolly unaffected. Their lives were in danger, after all–it was hardly the time to be unbalanced by the human form. They had shared a hayloft half the size of her bed in Petervarad; they had bathed mere paces apart, with only a flimsy wooden door separating them. This was nothing new, nothing outrageous.