“Nay, rascal.” I slapped at him playfully. “I am for the Douglases, as ye recall.” But I gave him a wink, to make it clear such mischief was not off the table upon my return.
I tidied myself the best I was able, given that I had only the kirtle I had left home in, and none of my herbs, save the wormwood and valerian I used to soothe Thomas’s pain. I took some of the latter with me, for young Douglas had both a cough and a fever, which are sometimes accompanied by pain. For the rest, any tonics to brew up, I hoped the Douglases’ garden was sufficient to make do.
Their house was half again as large as the one I had grown up in, with stone footings, a thatched roof, and clay walls. Most luxurious to me, there was a second full story for the family to sleep in, and since the Douglas family had only four boys and a girl to our eight bairns, I could only imagine how spacious that must feel. At the rear of the home was a separate room to quarter the two servants—human servants, unlike Morven, could not use the crockery for a bed. So too the Douglas house was much less smoky than either the one I grew up in or Thomas’s, for their hearth had venting to the outside through the roof. ’Twas a novel idea, it seemed to me, though I did not know how they might keep out the rain.
I knocked on the front door before calling in, “Is anyone about? I have come to see the sick child.” And I chewed pensively on my lower lip, hoping they would not shoo me away.
A small woman I recognized as one of the family servants came to greet me, with a finger to her lips. “Young Douglas is sleeping,” she said quietly. “We hope he will stay that way. The cough does trouble him so.” As if to illustrate this, a dry, hacking cough came from deeper in the cottage, accompanied by harsh, gasping breaths.
Poor bairn.
The servant sighed. “Ye may as well come in. He’s awake now anyway.”
I did not let her terseness bother me, but stepped inside, handing her my cloak. “That cough sounds dreadful. Do you boil up three onions into a brew. Will taste awful but shall soothe the cough.”
She stared blankly at me for a moment. I supposed she had no idea who I was to order her about. “You are Mairi Grieve’s daughter.”
I nodded. “Thomas Shepherd sent me to help.”
“Your father did remarry—” She shook her head, clasping her lips closed, as one who had been chastised for gossip many times in the past. “I will set the onions to boil.” She scurried away to the hearth.
I felt my eyes go wide, biting back an astonished, “Who?” I did not care. Eamon Grieve wasnotmy father, nor need we pretend so any longer. He was nothing to me.
Disloyal lout. Mairi is not six months in the grave.
I followed the sound of coughing to a pallet tucked away in the corner. The youngest Douglas boy was damp of forehead—I would bid the maid bring dried feverfew for him as well—and the blankets were a twist around him. His arms lay across the covers, and one of them had been wrapped with a bandage. Beside him sat his mother, head bowed in her graceful wimple, weeping.
Like as not, she will catch it from him. But you cannot keep a loving mother from her sick child. Mairi it was who taught me that.
“Mistress Douglas.” I inclined my head, then gestured at the bandaged arm. “Was he wounded?”
She looked up with reddened eyes, and I knew not whether she meant to welcome me or banish me from her house. “Oh, Mistress Grieve,” said she. “Good of you to come. Nay, he is not wounded, but has been bled.”
I struggled to hide my frown.Bleeding does naught to help the bleeder,only to line the pockets of the charlatans who use it.
A vision came upon me then of rivers of blood, high enough to reach my knees, and an echoing phrase:The land must feed.I blinked and shook it away, confused and with no leisure now to puzzle it out.
The boy fell into another fit of coughing, dry and hacking, the type that produces nothing but a sore belly. Once it gets started, it rarely stops, and breathing becomes difficult. Indeed, he heaved out rough, aborted gasps, only to be interrupted by another fit of coughing. Desperation was setting in for both the boy and his mother. It clawed at me as well.
Do not give in. What would Mairi do?But all the knowledge she’d had passed to me seemed to have flown from my mind.
And a small voice inside me whispered,Mairi’s knowledge is not the only resource you possess.
I closed my eyes, reached down deep for the sense of calm to overtake me, and focused on slowing my pulse. I envisioned the forest around me, where once I had sat and gathered wildflowers with Mairi under the bright summer sky. How the sun had beat down on our heads, and the breeze had tickled across my face. I took the peace of that day deep inside myself and, when I was ready, opened my eyes. I placed a hand upon the boy’s forehead and allowed my sense of calm to radiate outwards.
“Be at peace,” I told young Douglas. “Fear not that this illness shall steal your breath. For like the oak, you shall remain standing, and the ailment is like a breeze that moves through your branches and will be on its way.”
His coughing stopped.
I pulled back, hands at my breast.Those words came not from Mairi Grieve. You choose to live in mortal lands. You should restrict yourself to mortal means of healing.
No.
I will use any means within my power to restore what is unwell.
Young Douglas stared at the ceiling, blinking in disbelief, his chest raising and lowering dramatically as normal breathing was restored.
His mother gaped and brought her hand to the cross around her throat. “He breathes again. Blessed saints!”
