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“A very good question. I will look forward to his explanation.”
Hastings imagined that Sir Roger had kept quiet because he had a healthy desire to keep his hide intact. He was doubtless praying that he would find his overlord’s mother alive and thus escape Severin’s anger. It was not to be.
Hastings had always believed that the Healer was older than the sessile oaks that grew thick and strong by her cottage—that, indeed, she had magically appeared on the earth at the same time those trees had burst through the soil. But her face was unlined, her skin soft, her hair was black with but a few strands of gray weaving through it. She always wore a dark brown wool gown with a rope tied around her waist. For as long as Hastings could remember, the Healer had always looked the same.
The Healer wasn’t smiling at the group of men who rode to her cottage. She didn’t smile either when she saw Hastings, just waited patiently, her hands very still at her sides.
“Healer,” Hastings said as she dismounted her palfrey, Marella. “You look well. Ah, and here is Alfred.” The huge brindle cat leapt into her arms, making her stagger back. Hastings heard the men’s hoarse whispers. They were probably crossing themselves, for the cat surely had to be the largest in all of England. Hastings hugged Alfred, petted his big head, then set him down.
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 Severin had 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.”
“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, Hastings, 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. I am glad he failed, Hastings. Nor am I displeased that he managed to kill off 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?”
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“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. Mayhap 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 leave. Gwent said as he helped her mount Marella, “A strange woman. As for 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.”
It rained 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.
The abbot, Father Michael, greeted Severin politely and welcomed them all into the cold great hall of the abbey. He was affable until he saw Hastings. He cleared his throat, saying, “My lord, your lady, of course, will not remain here. One of the brothers will escort her to another building, where she will remain until you are ready to resume your journey in the morning.”
“I don’t think so,” Severin said, nothing more. Hastings didn’t understand what was happening but she knew he was angry. So women weren’t allowed with the monks. Why did this seem to anger Severin?
“It is the way of our order, my lord. She will be fed. But she is not allowed to remain here with the men. It is considered a sacrilege. It is not done. Our Lord would not look kindly upon us for breaking one of his sacred orders.”
Hastings was on the point of telling her husband that she didn’t care, she just wanted to change from her wet clothes, when Severin drew his dagger from the wide leather belt at his waist. In a quick, graceful movement, he put the point to the abbot’s throat. “I know how you treat ladies, Father. I will not have my wife lying on a damp mattress with only a stingy thin blanket to cover her, shivering until her teeth chatter. I won’t have her drinking cold, thin soup that some monk slips into her cell whilst she isn’t looking. She will remain here, with me, with my men and your holy brothers.”
Father Michael opened his mouth, both astonished and infuriated. Severin simply pressed the tip of his knife into his throat. A drop of blood appeared. “It will be as I say, Father. I will ensure that she doesn’t send your monks into agonies of unfulfilled lust. She will remain at my side. Think of her as another man. Think of her as a budding brother whose hair is but overlong.”
Above all, the abbot wasn’t stupid. This man all garbed in gray didn’t seem to care that he, Father Michael, abbot to this long-lived order of Benedictines, was God’s emissary, that he would go to hell if he stuck that knife in the abbot’s throat. Father Michael would have to give in, but it galled him. All the lord’s men were wet to the bone, huddled together, but the woman, ah, that one standing there all proud, her long hair in damp masses down her back, as wet as the men were, he could still see how she was looking at him, at his helpless brothers. He knew she had put her husband up to this. She was a snare of the Devil. All females were. Seducers of honorable men, whores. She should be off by herself, away from men of goodwill and morality, she should—
