The Healer said as she rubbed her bare toes against Alfred’s fat side “He eats all my food. I am now the skinny one. He will bury me when the time comes. Now, Hastings, come inside and tell me what it is you wish.”
The smell within the small cottage nearly swamped the senses. There was basil, rosemary, foxglove, allium, hyssop, so many smells that collided with one another, blending and softening, forming new scents that dazzled the nose and made Hastings’s eyes water.
Hastings sat on a small stool and waited for the Healer to give her a cup of her own private potion, a sweet yet tart brew that she much enjoyed, but the Healer would never give her the recipe or ever send her away with more than that one single cup. She watched the Healer give a « large wooden bowl of the potion to Alfred. The cat’s slurping was loud
in the room.
“It is my lord’s mother,” Hastings said, then she told the Healer what Sevè*finlîad told her. “He said she then would sleep. It seems to me that this sleeping is her mind’s way of renewing her, perhaps. Have you something that could help such a strange malady?”
The Healer looked through the narrow open door at the men who were milling about. She winced as one of them, paying no attention, let his horse back into the wood pile and knock logs to the ground. “I have always disliked men,” she said in that soft singsong voice of hers. “They tread upon my herbs because they never pay attention to anything that is beyond their noses. They belch and snore and their minds are lewd. Nay, I would rid the world of the animals if I could.”
“My husband isn’t like that.”
I
“It is too soon for you to know that. I imagine you believed he was
Satan’s own spawn before you enjoyed pleasure with him. Aye, turn red,
stings but don’t lie to yourself. Your father was like that, as was Sir
Richard de Luci. Aye, that one was a pig who killed his wife to have you.
T m elad he failed, Hastings. Nor am I displeased that he managed to kill
ff that miserable wife of his before he failed. I have heard talk that all is
not well at Sedgewick. There are forces at work there that will bring
tragedy.”
“You speak of Eloise?”
“Aye. Poor child. What chance could she have?”
“You heard that Lady Marjorie abuses Eloise?”
The Healer shrugged. “It would be nothing new, would it? But you will have a care, Hastings. Nothing is ever what it seems. Nothing. Don’t ever forget that. Now, let me give you some herbs that might help your husband’s mother. Ah yes, there are so many smiles and sighs now that you enjoy Lord Severin. Why did you bend, Hastings?”
“I do not like strife. I know nothing of men and thus I did not deal well with him. Dame Agnes and my serving girl, Alice, told me what to do. I decided to treat him well, nothing more, Healer.”
“He probably brags to his men that he has brought you to heel.”
“Perhaps I am the one who controls the heeling.”
The Healer shook her head. She smiled, it was a small thing, stingy even, but it was a smile. “You are guileless, Hastings. That is why you must have a care. Go now, I have business with my plants. Alfred, you may have no more potion now. Go terrorize the men outside. Meow at them and stretch up on your hind paws. It will scare them witless. Mayap they will flee screaming into the forest and lose themselves and get eaten by boars. They are all worthless loutheads.”
Hastings touched her fingertips to the Healer’s arm and took her
eave. Gwent said as he helped her mount Marella, “A strange woman.
s or that cat, the beast is large enough to have a seat at a trestle table.”
He eats enough for two men,” Hastings said. “Give him two seats.”
•il
It rained for all during the day, endless, ceaseless rain, turning the world gray, making them all miserable. There were twelve of them, all pressed against their horses’ necks. Hastings was relieved that she’d brought most of her herbs. Someone would surely sicken from this miserable weather. By six o’clock that first afternoon, Severin called a halt. In their path was Wigham Abbey, a stark gray-stone building built in the last century. It looked menacing in the dying afternoon light. Hastings shivered, not from the cold or the rain, but from the apprehensive feeling that pile of stones gave her.