AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“What about my head?” he asked, rubbing his bruised temple.
“You must have hit your head on the anvil as you fell. You’re lucky it seems to have been merely a glancing blow. Now, we need to get you to bed. You’ll need rest to recover.”
“I told you!” his wife said, her voice shaking. “I told you that you needed to ease up. You’re too old for this kind of work.”
“This isn’t just about work,” Elwyn said. “There are a number of factors involved. But rest is what’s needed now.”
Elwyn and Bryn together were able to lift the smith and half carry him into the house. Fortunately, the bedroom was on the ground floor, so they didn’t have to get him up the stairs. They got him into bed, propped up on pillows. Elwyn made a cup of willow bark tea, which his wife fed to him, sip by sip, berating him the whole time.
While they did that, Elwyn pulled Bryn aside. “I know we need to go, but I’m afraid to leave him right now. I should watch him for at least an hour or two, and I’d like to give him one more dose, but that will need to wait.”
“That’s up to you. You’re the one in the most danger.”
She glanced back toward her patient and heaved a sigh. “They’ve been the worst to me, but it is my duty.”
“So you’ve decided to trust yourself again?”
“I have. I do have a gift, and I should use it. Which makes it all the more important that I get matters settled. But to do that, I would have to leave my patient.”
“I’d say you should be able to linger for an hour. They shouldn’t be able to get here any sooner than that. We don’t even know that they’re coming today. Then we’ll get off the road as soon as we leave the village.”
She nodded and returned to her patient, checking his pulse and opening her senses again to check his heart. Its beat was a little weak and irregular. One more dose should stabilize him better, but she’d prefer to wait so she wouldn’t risk an overdose. While she waited, she sent Bryn back to the cottage to get the ingredients needed for ongoing treatment. She could leave those with the wife, who was sure to administer them as instructed.
Bryn returned half an hour later with several jars that he’d labeled. He wrote out Elwyn’s instructions, and she repeated those to Sara to make sure she understood. “Rest is most important, though,” she added. “No swinging a hammer or pumping bellows. I should be back in a week or so, and then we can see how you’re progressing.”
“I told you we needed to take on an apprentice,” the wife said to her husband.
“And who in this village would I take on?” he asked. “There are no young men.”
“We’ll advertise with the next peddler who comes along. He can spread the word to other villages. There’s got to be someone who wants to train as a smith or who wants to take over a forge. It’s a good living.”
“Not in this village,” he said with a snort. “We don’t have enough work to keep a new smith busy.”
Elwyn cleared her throat. “Part of rest is staying calm,” she said. “No excitement. No shouting or arguing.”
“Tell her that,” the smith muttered.
“I am. Now, one more dose of this medicine, and then I really must go.” She administered one drop, then sat and monitored the smith’s condition for a few more minutes until she was certain the dose wasn’t too much. His heartbeat was much more regular. It looked like he’d made it through this crisis. If he followed her instructions, he might get somewhat better in time, but he was old and probably wouldn’t fully recover.
Sara sent them off with some meat pies for their journey, and they hurried down the lane. It was far later than Elwyn had wanted to leave, but she had to hope it still wasn’t too late.
When they neared the market square, her hopes were dashed. It was full of armed men on horseback, and in the middle of them was the baron—with the duke at his side.
Chapter 17
Elwyn grabbed Bryn’s arm and pulled him to the side of the lane, up against a house so covered with wisteria that they could hide behind the vines. “They’re already here,” she said, despair welling up in her.
“They are?” he asked, moving to look beyond the vines before she pulled him back. “They must have had an early start and made it farther than I expected.” He groaned. “I should have told you sooner. We could have left yesterday.”
“But then the smith would have died.”
She couldn’t resist studying Maxen through the vines. Sunlight glinted off his golden hair and his armor as he sat tall in the saddle, an imposing figure. She waited for a pang of yearning to strike her upon seeing him again, but she mostly just felt angry. How did he feel about her? He was here, but did that mean he was eager to run a fugitive to ground, or did he merely want to find her?
If he’d wanted to find her, he wouldn’t have brought her accuser, she decided. He was hunting a fugitive. He might have felt as betrayed as she did if he believed she’d used her position to murder a man under his command while under his roof, but then he could only feel that way because he’d assumed the worst about her. His betrayal was by far the worst. Her betrayal was only in his mind.
“They haven’t seen us yet,” Bryn said. “What do you want to do?”
“There’s no point in heading to court if the duke’s here.”
