Her visit to Ruth had been instigated by the new shelves in the sick house, shelves that held tools, utensils, cloth, and basins, but no medicine. With Cory hovering dutifully between them, she’d discussed with Diarmad what was needed. The surgeon had grumbled and muttered a bit, but he had answered when pressed, what he gave for fever, what he packed into angry wounds, what he lacked in his dwindling private stores. And Claire, ignoring his absolute refusal to show even a speck of affability, told him nicely that she would forage around Caeravorn to help restock his supply.
Or learn to forage, as it was—hence her visit to Ruth, to know what she was looking for.
Back home, she’d kept a little windowsill garden—lavender, peppermint, a few hardy greens that soothed her need to nurture something living through long night shifts. During her nurse’s training, one elective course on alternative medicine had turned out to be one of her favorites; she had learned just enough to recognize which plants carried real uses and which were snake oil—if only she could recognize them outside a fully outfitted nursery or the friendly co-op at the corner of her street. Here, in this brutal century, such knowledge wasn’t a quaint hobby.
So now, basket in hand, she set out with a sense of purpose. Her mind should have hummed with the names and leaf shapes Ruth had taught her, but instead she kept harking back to the near-smile from Ciaran Kerr, to the very fact that he’d actually ribbed her a bit, that kidding in general was part of his repertoire. Good Lord, how dangerous would a man like him be if he was good-humored, if he showed what surely must be a devastating smile, if he was at least half as intimidating as he was?
The practical side of her brain wondered if he weren’t dangerous enough already, just as he was, no smile necessary.
Certainly, she was...hm, what was she?
She considered and dismissed a variety of words—captivated, fascinated, smitten even (not!)—and decided onintrigued.
Ciaran Kerr intrigued her, and only partly because he was or seemed familiar to her.
“Stop it,” she told herself. She had no business being intrigued by a man who lived seven hundred years before she was born. None at all.
She marched on, smiling at villagers who responded with curious stares, past the thatched roofs and smoke-plumed chimneys, skirting alongside the MacKinlay army’s camp, to where the land sloped downward into low woodland of beeches and birches.
She kept to the edge at first, hearing Ivy’s warning in her head:don’t stray too far beyond the village, not any further than a scream might carry.
What a way to live, Claire thought, with a greater appreciation for the fact that she rarely had cause for concern when stepping foot outside her apartment building at the edge of her small hometown.
She found next to nothing along the edges of the trees, though, and stepped under the cool canopy of leaves, and almost immediately she spotted what she had come for—tufts of yarrow, their pale clusters standing bright against the green. She knelt, plucked carefully, and pressed the stems into her basket with an instant sense of pride.
A little further in, she found a white willow, its bark peeling away from the trunk in places. She cut strips with a small knife also borrowed from the kitchens but didn’t take too much forfear of weighing down the basket too early. She decided to fetch more bark on her way back.
Fairly quickly, and not much further inside the woods, she found feverfew next, its daisy-like heads nodding in a patch of sun. She chased clusters of that deeper into the trees, all the while searching every plant, leaf, and tree around her for anything else she recognized. She found comfrey near a fallen log and was surprised to discover foxglove not too far from that, or what remained now so late in the year of its tall spikes of pinkish-purple flowers. She hesitated and then resisted plucking the foxglove—neither Ruth nor Diarmad had mentioned it, and Claire knew very little about it except that every part of the plant was poisonous.
She continued on, moving almost without thought, slipping from patch to patch, stooping and rising, her hands growing stained and fragrant with sap and crushed leaves while the basket grew heavier. She was sometimes happily distracted by non-medicinal sights, including a flash of blue as a jay darted low through the trees, back and forth several times, apparently scolding her for daring to enter its territory. Once, she startled a pair of rabbits from a thicket, their white tails vanishing into another section of brush. They were not the cute bunnies she’d find around Conshohocken, but larger, long-legged hares, the first she’d ever seen in person.
She was sure she hadn’t been gone more than an hour when she straightened once again and bent her back left and right, a bit sore from so much stooping, and decided she’d collected plenty, maybe more than enough to last quite some time. It was then, brushing damp earth from her skirts, that she noticed how still the woods had grown.
The sun, once high, now slanted lower, shadows lengthening between the trees. She turned slowly, the basket swinging with her on her arm
Nothing looked familiar.
“Oops,” she murmured, though without much concern. She couldn’t have gone far in just an hour—not when she’d only been drifting from plant to plant rather than walking with purpose in any one direction.
She pivoted once, twice, but no smoke from the keep rose above the tree line, no sound of villagers carried on the wind. There was only the whisper of branches overhead and the repetitive knock of a woodpecker in the distance.
She took a few steps one way, certain it was correct, and then halted, second guessing herself. She’d hadn’t walked straight and direct, true, and she had been searching the brush and foliage, but she had paid some attention to her surroundings, had been so sure she could retrace the path that brought her here. Now, staring into the endless press of trees, which looked the same in every direction, she wasn’t sure there was a path to retrace.
A few minutes later, growing nervous now, believing she was seriously lost, Claire took back every kind thought she’d had about this century after Ciaran Kerr had nearly smiled at her today.
***
The light was waning when Ciaran set out, teeth clenched around his foul mood. He’d returned to the keep, nearly looking forward to an early evening, with naught to do but meet with his steward regarding correspondence that had arrived that morning. But he’d been waylaid by Ivy just inside the hall, her face anxious with worry as she announced to him that Claire hadn’t been seen since she’d taken off early in the afternoon, meaning to forage in the wood across from the MacKinlay camp for plants and herbs.
“And Alaric isn’t returned yet either,” she’d said with excitement, her babe on her shoulder. “I’d have asked him to search for her but—Ciaran, what if she’s lost? She’s not any more familiar with Caeravorn than I am, not with anything beyond the village. And now it looks like it’s going to rain again and it’s going to be dark soon—oh, boy.”
He’d sighed internally, his day not yet done apparently. “Nae worry, lass. I’ll fetch her. She’s probably on her way at this moment.”
“Oh, thank you, Ciaran,” Ivy had been quick to show her appreciation, relief etched on her face. “I’d have asked Alaric, but he’s still out with—”
He’d turned, essentially cutting her off mid-sentence, calling mildly over his shoulder, “I’ll bring her in. I’ll tell her to check in with ye when she arrives.”
She’d babbled on, something else, but he didn’t hear.
