PROLOGUE
The tall, broad-shouldered youth gave no consideration for others using the cobbled pavement as he ran past them, bearing his load as if it weighed no more than a feather.
He knocked one man aside as he rushed around the corner. The baker’s basket of loaves nearly toppled as the young man buffeted him to one side.
The ease at which he was able to cleave a way through the thronging crowd might have had something to do with the youth’s strapping build, and it was this that aided him in shoving his way through the marketplace to the other side of town. His feet seemed to know their way along the well-worn track, leaping the shallow potholes and avoiding protruding rocks with the ease of familiarity.
Not a single person turned to him in anger or frustration as he passed.
They all knew the tall youth and the pale, waning slip of a girl he was carrying in his arms.
“So young,” they muttered to one another as they watched the young pair pass. “So ill-fated.”
“Och, the poor dears.” A harsh-faced, crotchety old woman at the edge of town sucked her teeth with a hissing sound. “The lad so braw an’ the girl so frail.”
The crone pondered out aloud, having no one else to talk to. She muttered that the blacksmith’s young apprentice would do better in life if he simply allowed God to take his sister if he stopped resisting the inevitable and working himself into a great worry every time her health failed. Age gave old Agatha permission to be cruel in such a practical way, but she didn’t have the courage to say such things in front of the hulking youth. No one did.
Barely seventeen years of age, the youth was already a head taller than any other man in the village. His work at the smithy only served to enhance the massive muscles he was destined to grow from the time he was a lad.
With each passing season, his sister grew thinner while her brother grew into a muscle-bound giant, with what looked like a shield of tendon and sinew from his thick neck to his perfectly honed calves. But all the muscles in the world were not strong enough to fight back the disease that held his beloved sister in its grasp.
All the youth could do was carry her to the physician whenever the fevers took hold.
Speeding around a final corner, the youth shifted his fainting sister into the crook of one arm and hammered on the healer’s door. His fist was clenched, the pounding so loud it could not be ignored.
“Elias Kinney!” the young man cried. “Master Kinney, please! Are ye there?!”
His voice was already deep and powerful; whether it was from the emotion or the changing of his body from boy to man was unclear. The frequency of his visits had never made the fear for his sister’s life fade away.
“Please open. ’Tis for me sister, Alice! She’s had one o’ her turns again!” he called, thumping the door until the timber panels shivered. The black-haired youth paid no heed to the people milling around him or that they might laugh to hear the fear in his voice. Everyone in town knew the Duncans. They all knew the unfair balance that destiny had bestowed on the siblings, all the strength to one and none to the other.
The sick girl’s brother was determined to fight the cruel hand the Fates had dealt them.
“Are ye in there, healer?” He would sit outside the door all night if he had to.
A voice called out from inside the healer’s home, “Aye, aye, hold yer horses! I’m coming!” The door was wrenched open by Healer Elias Kinney. The apothecary understood to a point, but healing cordials and elixirs cost money to brew. His voice was sympathetic but firm.
“Br—”
“I have money!” the youth interrupted, before he could be turned away. “I can pay this time, I promise…” He repositioned the flopping girl in his arms so that Kinney might see her better. “Alice needs help. Dinnae turn us awa’!”
The child he held looked lost already. Her face was ice white and clammy. She looked ghostly save for two fevered heat splotches upon her cheeks. Her dark hair, so exactly like her brother’s, was inky damp with sweat, thin strands sticking to her brow and neck. Her breathing was ragged, and her chest barely moved. Her eyes remained closed, long and pretty lashes fanning over the mauve crescent circles under her eyes.
“Och lad, I have another invalid here,” Kinney said, raising a hand to stall the young man at his door. “And I told ye before that the elixirs Alice needs…the ingredients take days to harvest an’ months to prepare.”
“I have gold, ye auld fool,” the youth insisted. He moved forward to place a boot on the apothecary’s doorstep to stop him from closing the door. “I swear to ye.”
If the healer had tried to move the young man from his entrance, he would have pushed and shoved in vain. Fear for his sister’s life had made the youth stubborn.
“Ye have it all?”
It was clear from Elias Kinney’s face that he was not an unfeeling man. But his time was not infinite and his resources too precious to give away gratis. If he continued allowing the Duncans to offer payment in labor instead of coins, the apothecary would see his own reserves diminish to nothing. And then he would be able to treat no one at all.
The youth hesitated before saying, “I have half a gold sovereign, Elias. I can get ye another in a week. I swear!”
“Hoots!” The healer stepped aside immediately and ushered the youth inside.
The waif-like girl moaned and shifted in her brother’s arms as if she could sense that help was at hand. Pain, especially in someone so young and vulnerable, was hard to ignore. Despite his caviling about payment, Elias was a good man at heart and had dedicated himself to healing the villagers.
