“What is it?” She was on her feet in an instant. “What has happened?* “”*
“We have a visitor. She has never come here. She has never left her cottage. All know she is a recluse. Yet she is here demanding to see you.”
Hastings turned to see the Healer walk briskly into the great hall. She was wearing shoes. Hastings’s own mouth dropped open at the sight of her.
The Healer waved everyone away, said nothing at all to anyone, and quickly knelt down beside a sick man. She continued silent, merely grunted at some of them, shook her head at one man who was already unconscious, and actually pinched another man’s wrist who just happened to grin up at her.
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“Where is Alfred?” Hastings asked for want of anything better. She was as bewildered as Alice.
“My beauty is sleeping soundly in the sun. I left him a roasted chicken if he awakes and is hungry.”
“He is always hungry, Healer.”
“Aye, he deserves to be, not like these louts sprawled about in your great hall, Hastings. Well, I’ve done what I can for them. The man yon will die soon. I cannot help him. The others will survive with your care.”
“Healer, how did you know we needed you?”
Hastings stared at the Healer as the woman looked down at her long fingers, twisting the odd gold ring about on her finger, a magic ring perhaps, one older than England itself.
“Healer?”
Her braids flew as she raised her head. “Bedamned to you, Hastings! Where is Gwent? I had prayed he would be here, but he is not. Where is he?”
Gwent? The Healer despised men. All knew it. Gwent?
Hastings noticed for the first time that the Healer did not look quite like the ragged woman that she normally did. No, her gown was a soft yellow, she was wearing leather slippers, her thick, long hair was braided loosely and tied with a yellow ribbon. She looked remarkably young.
“My son has gone to find him and another dozen of our men,” Lady Moraine said.
“He is a man but surely he would not lose himself apurpose.”
“No, he and all the other men were drugged,” Hastings said. “Richard de Luci swore that it would not kill them. But he captured us and we were forced to leave all of them unconscious on the ground. Severin is very worried. We will know by the end of the week.”
“That dim-cockled lout,” the Healer muttered to herself. “I warned him that this journey to Rosehaven would bring him low, but would he listen to me? Does any man ever listen? No, the cocky little bittle sticks just strut about and expect all to transpire as they wish it to. I told
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him not to go. Even Alfred jumped on him and tried to hold him down.”
Hastings could but stare at her. “But you did not tell me that the journey would bring me low, Healer. Yet you told Gwent. What is this?”
“I did not know about you, Hastings. You are here, after all, standing in front of me all smiling and well, and Gwent is likely in some dungeon somewhere rotting like a meat under maggots. By the Devil’s shins, I will make the overgrown pus-head regret this once he returns.”
“Saint Catherine’s eyebrows,” Lady Moraine gasped, staring at the Healer, “I see the truth now. You are besotted. You are acting just like Hastings does with my son. You and Gwent. But how can that be? He hates Alfred. I suspect he even fears him. He jumps whenever the cat leaps at him.”
The Healer’s chin went up. Hastings saw that her neck was firm. No, the Healer wasn’t old at all. Certainly no older than Lady Moraine or Hastings’s own mother. “Gwent now has great affection for Alfred. Alfred even once sat on Gwent’s legs whilst he ate some of my special broth. Alfred did not try to steal the broth. There is now a bond between them. That miserable crockhead.”
“Healer,” Alice said, “Alfred would steal the meat off your plate. Surely he would not show pity to Gwent?”