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After lunch, he insisted on trying to write labels, so she gave him a scribbled list of the names she needed on labels, some squares of paper, pen, and ink. She sat beside him at the table, mixing herbs and putting them in jars. They worked together mostly in silence, but it was a comfortable, companionable silence. She didn’t feel like he was intruding on her. His presence was almost as restful as being alone. When it came time to put the labels on the jars, she got out the glue pot, and she was surprised when he automatically reached for the right jar to go with the label he’d just smeared glue on.
“How did you know that?” she asked.
“Know what?”
“That’s the right label. You must know something about herbs.”
He blinked and looked at the jar and the label. “I suppose I do.” She quizzed him on the rest, and he got them right. The only ones that stumped him were her personal blends. Next, she tested him on their uses, and he knew that, too.
“You must be an herbalist, yourself. Or an apothecary.”
“Which doesn’t fit with the armor and sword, unless perhaps I’m a battlefield healer. I may have the armor and sword to protect me, but my main job is to care for injuries or the sort of illnesses that come up in camps. But why would someone want to hurt the healer? Have there been any battles nearby?”
“No armies have marched through here since I’ve been here, and I wasn’t aware there was any war. The kingdom was at peace, last I heard.”
“Perhaps it was a training exercise.” He grinned. “And I made someone angry by winning too many hands of cards.” He put the last label on a jar and said, “Is there anything else you need me to do? Because if not, I believe I’ll take a nap and hope I wake up with my memory intact.”
“That sounds like a good idea. I’ll be out front in the shop.” She shut the sitting room door after he entered so she wouldn’t disturb his rest, then carried all the jars out to the shop and arranged them on the shelves. There weren’t a lot of customers that afternoon, for which she was grateful. She wouldn’t have been able to give them her full attention.
The question of what this village was continued to nag at her. Surely the former inhabitants of the cottage would have known if there was something odd about this area. Mother Dilys should have recorded when people left or disappeared. That was one of the duties of the healer. Elwyn had resisted looking for the logbook because having it in her possession would mean she was accepting the role, making a commitment. As long as she didn’t have the book, she could tell herself she was merely recommending herbal remedies while living in the cottage. No one but the resident healer was supposed to look at the book. Everything recorded there was private, and reading it without being the healer would mean she was prying.
On the other hand, she couldn’t continue to recommend remedies responsibly without knowing the histories of the local people. She needed to know if someone had reacted badly to a particular herb and what chronic conditions she should look out for. She also thought that knowing more about this place might help her know more about what had happened to Bryn.
So, she needed to find that logbook. She knew it wasn’t in the sitting room, pantry, or shop. She went up to her room and dug through the chest, looking under all the linens. “Do you know where the book is?” she asked the helper. A clatter from the spare room answered her.
The helper had made good progress in organizing the room. It had revealed the bed, but the room wasn’t quite ready for occupancy. A stack of boxes slid off a chest against the far wall, and she went over there and opened the chest. Inside she found a great quantity of lace doilies, some faded paper flowers, and underneath it all was a large, crudely bound book that had more doilies pasted on it. She could barely lift it out of the chest.
“Now, let’s see what you can tell me about where I am,” she said as she carried it toward the window.
Chapter 8
The first page in the book established that this cottage had initially been built more than a hundred and fifty years ago, and the first resident had been a Mother Gladys. “Gladys? Is that who you are?” Elwyn asked, and was answered by a cheerful flutter of the lace curtains. “You had lovely penmanship, Gladys.” The ink had faded to a reddish brown, but the perfectly even lettering with plenty of swirls and flourishes was still quite legible.
As curious as Elwyn was about Gladys, the events of more than a century ago probably wouldn’t pertain to her current situation, so she flipped to the back. The last entry recorded Mother Dilys’s departure, more than five years ago. “As I am departing because there isn’t enough work to keep me busy, I am leaving the cottage without a replacement,” the entry read. “I trust that when a new healer is needed, she’ll find her way here.” The entries before that were sparse, showing why she felt she wasn’t busy enough. She saw barely one patient a week toward the end.
Elwyn noted that the miller had a history of stomach woes. It seemed he liked to harvest wild mushrooms, and he wasn’t good at telling the difference between the ones that were edible and the ones that would make him ill. He did, at least, know to avoid the truly dangerous ones. Mother Dilys had administered the same preparations Elwyn had given him. Perhaps what he really needed was a lesson on foraging mushrooms, Elwyn thought.
The log also mentioned when people gave up and left town—the innkeeper, the brewer, and others. They all left because they didn’t have enough customers to stay in business. But why had people gone before that?
There was an entry from about ten years ago that read as though it had been written in some confusion, a mention that Dilys could have sworn that there had been more people in the village, and no one had seen the lord. It was as though a large percentage of the population had simply vanished, but people weren’t certain they had ever been there. It reminded Elwyn of the way Mair had talked about her brother—she seemed to be sure she had one, since she had his belongings, but she didn’t know what had happened to him. She also had sounded foggy about her past, with a vague sense that she’d danced with someone once, though she wasn’t entirely sure.
It all sounded to Elwyn as though the village was under some kind of spell, or perhaps the lord had been cursed and that had somehow extended to the whole village. That was far beyond her area of expertise. She had the ability to sense what others were feeling, but real magic was quite beyond her. They’d need a wizard to tackle this problem. This also didn’t seem to have anything to do with Bryn, unless whoever had cursed the lord was living in his castle and holding people prisoner there. Would they find the missing townspeople in the castle? She couldn’t imagine that no one had ever looked, unless there was something keeping them out.
She’d been reluctant to introduce Mair to Bryn, but maybe she should. Mair might recognize him if he turned out to be one of the missing townspeople. She had a feeling she wouldn’t have to wait long for that. If she knew Mair, she wouldn’t be able to resist coming over to meet the newcomer.
In the meantime, she took the book to her room, sat at the small desk there, and dutifully recorded that she had assumed possession of the cottage, though she wasn’t sure of the precise date. Then she tried to remember the people she’d given any kind of treatment and the results she knew of. She left Bryn out, for the moment. She didn’t want a written record of him until she knew more about his situation. Her recordkeeping complete, she locked the book up inside her desk and went downstairs, feeling like she had more of a mystery than before, and no real answers other than what was ailing the miller.
Then it was time to open the shop. As she’d expected, Mair dropped by with some fresh milk not long afterward. “I had extra and thought you could offer it with tea,” she said.
“He’s still resting,” Elwyn said with a smile.
Mair sat at a table and said, “I’m in no rush. I’ll have a cup of that spicy blend.”
“That sounds good.” Both women turned to see Bryn standing in the doorway. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to intrude. I heard voices, and I was thirsty.”
A smile spread slowly across Mair’s face, as though she liked what she saw. Elwyn was surprised by the surge of jealousy that rushed through her. It wasn’t as though she wanted him for herself, so it was silly for her to be jealous over Mair’s appreciation of Bryn. It didn’t look like Mair recognized him, though. There went the theory that he was one of the missing villagers. “Mair, this is my guest, Bryn,” Elwyn said. “Bryn, Mair is my neighbor. She runs the dairy and keeps me supplied with milk and cheese.”
“Pleased to meet you,” Mair said.
