Whatever it may cost.
The baron’s son Malcolm was likely to be struck down before his prime. The young lord had received much of the same treatment as his mother. The doctor of medicine had taken his urine and his blood, assessed which humors of his body might be in excess or far too little and dosed him accordingly. The priests murmured and prayed around him, huddling together in his darkened bedchamber like bent-over gnomes.
I had them removed before I visited the boy.
They lingered in the hallway and muttered under their breaths in protest. What if he should die under my ministrations; what guarantee was there then for his immortal soul?
There is never any guarantee for an immortal soul. I had watched Mairi’s body all night and saw no soul fly up to Heaven, and none stolen away by the spirits as she had feared. Her flesh was empty, meant for the worms and to feed the land. Dead meant dead, as far as I could tell.
I shared none of this with them, of course.
It fell to the baron to silence the priest’s protests. “She has saved the life of the baroness,” he said, “and Sir Douglas as well. What the cunning woman wants, she shall have.” His brows lowered. “For now.”
My welcome was conditional; never could I be allowed to forget.
He dares...?My fingers curled as if into claws; I breathed deep to still the faery magic wakening in my veins.
De Lyne’s face softened, and he spoke almost like a loving father. “This is my only son and heir. There is nothing I would not try to preserve his life.”
Only son.Long years of pain hid in those two little words.
A wordless noise came from the end of the hallway, and my shepherd king turned to descend the stairs. I could read the sorrow in his limp shoulders and drooping head.
I would have run after him, to soothe and comfort him, distract him from his father’s thoughtless words. I wanted to grab the baron by the front of his rich, velvet tunic, and scold him for treating his own flesh and blood so. But to do that, to be for one moment distracted from my purpose, threatened everything Thomas and I had built together. The baron had made it perfectly clear: Thomas could not be his and mine as well.
To keep Thomas mine required this: that Malcolm his half-brother must live.
I said nothing, but stepped inside Malcolm’s chamber and closed the door behind me.
The room was dark and seemed modest for a baron’s boy. Heavy tapestries hung upon the walls, gloomy, unskilled depictions of child saints. The stench of incense assaulted my senses; it did not repulse me, as did crosses and prayers, but I could not help wondering if the priests thought their God had little sense of smell.
And in the middle of the room a high bed stood shut off from the world by thick curtains. I drew the curtains open, not too far, to look at my new patient.
It surprised me to find a baron’s boy—his pride, joy, and future heir—still only a boy, dwarfed by the enormous bed in which he lay. He might have been the youngest Douglas boy, lying there so fragile in his illness, or Glenna Baker’s younger brother. A skinny boy of around twelve, he had his mother’s pallor and light-brown hair, but curls like my shepherd, matted down with sweat from the fever.
I could picture Thomas at his age, sleeping on a bare pallet only, if he had even that much comfort. My poor love had been booted from the nest before reaching Malcolm’s age.
I could not begrudge Malcolm his father’s love, only regret there was too little of it to go around.
The boy had been slipping in and out of consciousness for days, the priests had reported. When he awoke, his murmurings made little sense, and they were given to believe Satan had taken the boy’s wits. Little food had he eaten this fortnight, and none of what he took could be kept down. He struggled to breathe as well, and must be bathed by others, like a wee bairn. When I put my hand to his wrist, his heartbeat was alarmingly slow.
I should have been called to see him long ago. Never had I been summoned to a bedside when it was too late. There is a first time for everything, I suppose.
This will not be it.
The thread around my heart tugged, speaking of my bond with the shepherd king. I would not let this boy die. I couldnotlet this boy die. My bond with the shepherd rested upon this.
Malcolm had suffered under this illness for so long, I knew not what I could do for him. The priests and learned doctors would point at me and say, “See? Her skills were worthless after all.” If I was so lucky. They might also name me heretic and blame me for his death. Never would they admit Malcolm’s demise resulted from their delay, had naught to do with me at all.
“I could do nothing,” Mairi would say, when she had been summoned to her patient’s bedside too late, when even the strongest theriac could no longer be of any help. “We had run out of time.”
I am a woman of Faery. We do not always heed the call of time.
Would you command the very seasons?Amadan had asked me, when I overturned his autumn and brought back lovely spring, if only for a moment.
Could I do it again?
The saints in the tapestries appeared to mock me. I could not perform miracles, after all. Why should I even try?
