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“Not that I’ve noticed.”
If it was poison, his body was doing a good job of purging it. The best she could do was treat the symptoms. She packaged the recommended preparations, gave him instructions, and quoted the price. The miller must have been feeling bad because he didn’t try to bargain. He didn’t even try to flirt. He merely paid, took his purchases, and left, leaning forward slightly, as though guarding his belly.
She shut the door behind him, gave herself a dose of a preventative in case the miller had a communicable illness, and hurried back to the sitting room. Her patient still hadn’t moved. His breathing was regular, and his pulse felt somewhat stronger. She even thought his color looked a bit better, though she wasn’t sure if his pallor was because of his injury or if he was a fair-skinned person who seldom saw the sun. That was another oddity. Most of the knights she knew were suntanned. They wore their helmets for tournaments or battle, but they trained outdoors without them. Even those with fair skin had brown faces. He wore the armor of a knight, but not properly. He didn’t have the muscles or the skin of a knight. When he woke, she’d have questions for him.
He could have been a prisoner, a knight who’d been confined for a long time. That would explain the pallor and lack of muscle tone, and he might not have had time to fully dress before escaping. The armor and sword would be most important, since they were hardest to replace. Her gaze turned in the direction of the castle, the top of the tallest tower barely visible above the trees through the window. What if it wasn’t deserted? Were prisoners being held there? She shook her head to clear the flight of fancy. She was so eager to learn the mystery of what had happened in this village that she was imagining stories.
By this time, it was lunchtime, and she ate what the helper had prepared for her before checking on her patient once more. He was still unconscious, and he didn’t react to her presence. She checked his wound, added more calendula tincture, put on a clean bandage and secured it once more, and all the while he didn’t moan or stir, though she was sure that no matter how gentle she tried to be, she was causing him some pain. Now she was starting to worry. Maybe she’d missed something. This kind of profound unconsciousness usually indicated a serious head injury.
She pressed her hand against his head and opened her senses as wide as they would go. She felt nothing in his head other than the ache in his cheek, and that went no deeper. She could find nothing abnormal in his brain that would lead to remaining this insensate. Since she’d missed critical signs before, she inspected his head with her fingers, probing for lumps or dents. There was nothing. As far as she could tell, he was merely deeply asleep.
If he’d regained consciousness, she would have encouraged him to go back to sleep, possibly even given him a sleeping tonic, so she supposed there was no harm in letting him remain like this. That would help his body heal, and he was less likely to do something like tear a stitch that would cause him to lose more blood if he was asleep. This was far better than him being awake and insisting he was fine and didn’t need to rest at all. She’d had far too many patients like that. Still, it was odd. She didn’t think she’d ever had a patient with this kind of wound remain unconscious for this long.
It was soon time to open the tea shop. She would have preferred not to, but if she didn’t open, she’d have to explain herself. She washed her hands, changed into a clean dress, and opened the shop. For once, she hoped she didn’t have any customers. Money would be nice, especially if she had to flee again, but she was far too distracted to enjoy the company and she didn’t want to have to answer questions about what was distracting her.
Mair arrived soon after the shop opened. “I need something soothing,” she said, collapsing into a seat at one of the tables. “I’ve spent most of the day looking for a calf who strayed from his mother, who was so distraught that I couldn’t milk her. I found the little bugger caught in a hedge near the brook, crying piteously, and yet he still fought me when I tried to free him. I would have been tempted to leave him there if his mother wasn’t usually one of my best milkers. I’ll be selling him off at the end of the summer, anyway.”
While she talked, Elwyn brewed a pot of chamomile and lemon balm tea. “You don’t keep the calves?”
“Not the males. I only need a bull to sire calves, and I need the calves so the cows produce milk. I keep the heifers and sell off the young bulls before they start challenging each other.”
“What becomes of them?”
“I try not to think about it,” Mair said wryly. “I like to think they’re off siring their own herds, but I imagine they more likely end up on someone’s plate or in someone’s stew pot. But I can’t afford to keep on anyone who doesn’t make milk.” With exaggerated brightness, she said, “So, how has your day gone?”
“Oh, the usual,” Elwyn said, bringing over the teapot and two cups. She sat across from her friend and poured tea for both of them. She needed the relaxing brew as badly as Mair did. “Did you hear anything last night?”
Mair frowned in thought. “Not that I can think of, but I sleep like the dead. You could probably blow a trumpet outside my window in the middle of the night and I wouldn’t stir. Why?”
“Oh, I thought I might have heard something, but I’m not sure whether or not I dreamed it.”
“Pity. A little excitement might have been fun.”
“Aside from a lost calf?”
“I’m not sure I’d call that exciting. At least not in an interesting way. You know what we need around here? A proper festival.”
“With twenty people?”
“There are a few more than that. If it brings us all together with good food, maybe some music, it could be festive. We should plan something for midsummer. Who knows, maybe by then we’ll have gained a few more people. I hope one of them’s a musician. We don’t have one here now, that I know of. You don’t play an instrument, do you?”
“My mother made me learn the harp, long ago, but it’s been years since I played.”
“I can blow a few notes on a tin whistle. My father had a viol, but I haven’t the slightest idea how to play it. This is why this village is so boring. No one here knows how to do anything other than their work. We don’t know how to have fun. We had good festivals when I was a girl.” She frowned as she took a sip of tea. “Though that may just be the golden glow of memory, and I’d find those festivals to be deadly dull now. I do remember wearing flowers in my hair and getting to stay up late. I remember there was dancing.” She sighed. “I’m sure there was even a time when I danced with someone. Or perhaps I dreamed it. Do you dance?”
“I learned when I was young, but I’m afraid I’ve quite forgotten how. They probably don’t do the same dances here.”
“We don’t do any dances here, so you could teach us what you remember. But for proper dancing, we need more men and, alas, those don’t just fall out of the sky and land in our gardens.”
Elwyn choked on the sip of tea she’d just taken. For a moment, she feared Mair had seen something. But if she had, she wouldn’t have held back from talking about it. Little did her friend know that a man had, in fact, fallen into her garden. The question was, what kind of man was he?
Once she’d finished her tea, Mair said, “I brought you some butter, freshly churned. And now I have to get back home to see if my wayward calf has strayed yet again. That one’s going to be trouble, I can tell. All men are, bovine or human.”
After Mair’s departure, Elwyn checked on the wounded man. He still showed no sign of waking. As much as she tried to reassure herself that he didn’t have any kind of injury that would lead to profound unconsciousness, she still worried.
The one thing that might leave someone insensate for this long, aside from an injury, was magic. Elwyn’s own powers were very limited. She could feel others’ feelings and she could provide some healing energy, but she couldn’t perform spells. She might be able to detect magic, though, if she looked for it.
This time, when she scanned her patient with her magical senses, she looked for signs of enchantment. She did pick up on some magical energy. She couldn’t tell if this man was under a spell, but magic had been used on or around him recently. There was no way to undo a spell without the proper counterspell and the right abilities and training, but she did have some preparations that might help break him out of a magical trance.
